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ALLYN AND BACON'S SERIES OF SCHOOL HISTORIES 

MODERN HISTORY 

EUROPE 

FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO THE PRESENT TIME 



BY 

WILLIS MASON WEST 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 



REVISED EDITION 



ALLYN AND BACON 

Boston antj Cl)icaiga 



, W S' 



'\^ [ 



ALLYN AND BACON'S SERIES OF 

SCHOOL HISTORIES 

12mo, half leather, numerous maps, plans, and illustrations 



ANCIENT HISTORY. By Willis M. West of the University of 
IVlinnesota. 

MODERN HISTORY. By Willis M. West. 

HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Charles M. Andrews of Bryn 
Mawr College. 

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By Charles K. Adams, 
and William P. Trent of Columbia University. 

THE ANCIENT WORLD. By Willis M. West. 

Also in two volumes : Part I: Greece and the East. 
Part II: Rome and the West. 



COPYRIGHT, 1903 AND 1907. 
BY WILLIS MASON WEST. 



LIBRARY Of CONGRESsf 

Two CoDies Received f 

JUN 3 i9or 

^^ Copyrieht ZMry 

mcL^C, fcjoy 

class/ ^ XXc, No, 
COPY B. 



NortoooB ^rcss 

I. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Uorwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE. 

My Ancient History closed with the epoch of Charlemagne. 
The present volume traces the interaction and development 
of the various forces which the ancient world had brought 
together and which had been partially fused in the Empire of 
Charlemagne. The treatment covers eleven centuries ; ^ but 
as much space is given to the last hundred years as to the 
preceding thousand, and, throughout, an unusual amount of 
attention is paid to the history of England. It seems fitting 
to offer a brief explanation for these two departures from 
custom. 

(a) For American students some knowledge of English history 
is essential. Much of that history, however, is meaningless 
or misleading, apart from its setting in the history of the 
continent of Europe ; and, whatever be ideally desirable, many 
secondary schools find it impossible to devote one year to 
modern Europe and another to England. Therefore I have 
tried to combine in some measure the advantages of the two 
separate subjects. If the result be satisfactory, vexing prob- 
lems of time aud arrangement are simplified. 

On the other hand, as American history more and more is 
gaining an important place for. itself in high school courses, 
that subject need be touched upon in a book of this kind only 
for illustration or where the connection of events requires it, 

(b) Four years ago, when I was asked to write a Modern His- 
tory for high schools, I agreed to do so provided I might give 
half my space to the period since the beginning of the French 
Kevolution. There was then no text-book upon any such 
plan, but within a few months past two excellent books have 

1 This use of the term " Modern History "is discussed in § i, 
ill 



iv PREFACE. 

appeared witli a somewhat similar distribution of space. This 
is good evidence of a wholesome trend in historical teach- 
ing. We can well afford to treat with brevity the more ephem- 
eral phases of the Middle Ages, however qnaint, if thereby 
can adequate space be won for the marvelous nineteenth 
century, and so for an intelligent introduction to the twen- 
tieth. When a choice must be made, we ought to sacrifice the 
past to the present. 

In connection with this principle, the present volume is still 
peculiar in the large proportion of attention given to the most 
recent history. An author is strongly tempted to pass lightly 
over the generation since the Franco-Prussian War, and the 
difficulties of the opposite course are apparent. Yet only by 
surmounting them is one main end of our study attainable. 
To check the story at 1871 is to stop upon the brink of a 
vast and sudden change, and therefore to leave for the youth 
a chasm between past and present much wider than that 
represented ordinarily *5y a human lifetime. The high school 
course in history ought to put the student in touch with 
present movements in politics and society. To secure this 
result, the teacher must seize eagerly upon striking oppor- 
tunities, as they arise, to connect current history with the 
closing narrative in the text. The latter part of the book 
affords such aid as it can in numerous suggestions for reports 

of this nature. 

WILLIS MASON WEST. 
University of Minnesota, 
' Minneapolis, January, 1904. 

EE VISED EDITION 

The changes in the face of the world during the past three 
years have made it necessary to revise and add to portions of 
this volume. To give this revision its due perspective and con- 
nection, I have been obliged to rewrite large parts of the clos- 
ing fourth of the book. 

W. M. W. 

February, 1907. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

List of Maps ix 

List of Illustrations x 

SECTION 

1-5. INTRODUCTION : The Elements, the Field, and the 

Periods 1 



PAET I. — LATIN CHRISTENDOM, FROM 
CHARLEMAGNE TO LUTHER. 

CHAPTER L— A NEW SERIES OP DARK AGES, 
814-1100. 

6-10. I. Disruption of the Empire of Charlemagne . . 9 

11-17. II. The New Barbarian Attack 12 

18-40. III. Peudalism 22 

41-44. IV. France from Verdun to the Twelfth Century . 51 

45-51. V. Germany from Verdun to the Empire, 843-962 . 55 

52-65. VI. The Holy Roman Empire of the German People, 

962-1056 .60 

66-76. VII. Empire and Papacy, 1056-1122 . . . . 74 

77-86. VIII. Empire and Papacy, 1122-1273 .... 85 

87-88. IX. Results of the Struggle between Emperors and Popes 94 

CHAPTER IL — THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 
1100-1300. 

89-91. I. Conditions in the East before the Crusades . .98 
92-105. II. The Crusades 103 

CHAPTER in. — WESTERN EUROPE FROM THE • 

BEGINNING OF THE CRUSADES TO THE 

REFORMATION, 1100-1520. 

106-116. I. The Rise of the Towns . . , . , .11^ 

117. IL The Rise of Monarchic States . . . .132 

V 



VI CONTENTS. 



SECTION 




118-147. 


III. 


148-154. 


IV. 


155-156. 


V. 


157. 


VI. 


158-160. 


VII. 


161. 


VIII. 


162. 


IX. 


163-167. 


X. 


168-169. 


XI. 


170-173. 


XII. 


CHAPTER 


174-177. 


I. 


178-186. 


II. 


187-194. 


III. 


195-199. 


IV. 



PAGK 

Europe by Separate States : England to 1500 . 133 

Europe by Separate States : France , . . 163 

Europe by Separate States : Spain . . . 168 

Europe by Separate States : Scandinavia . . 170 

Europe by Separate States : Germany . . . 171 

Europe by Separate States : Switzerland . , 174 

Europe by Separate States : The Netherlands . 177 
The Papacy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 

Centuries 179 

New Perils from the East : Tartars and Turks . 184 
The Political Situation at the Opening of the 

Reformation 187 

IV. —THE TRANSITION TO A NEW AGE: 
THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. 

Nature of the Renaissance 191 

Medieval Science and Philosophy .... 193 

Literature and the Fine Arts ..... 205 

The New Learning of the Renaissance . . . 217 



PAET II. — THE PERIOD OF MONARCHIC 
STATES, 1520-1789. 

CHAPTER I. —PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 

200. I. The Main Lines of Development . . . .225 
201-204. II. Tables of Sovereigns 225 

CHAPTER IL— THE AGE OF THE PROTESTANT 
REFORMATION, 1520-1648, 

205-218. I. The Rise of Protestantism 228 

219-232. II. A Century of Religious Wars . . . .240 

CHAPTER III. —ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

233-235. I. Preliminary : Survey of the Yorkist and Tudor 

Periods, 1485-1603 . - 254 

236-244. II. Religious and Political Conditions under the Early 

Stuarts 259 



255-257. 


I. 


258-265. 


II. 


266-269. 


III. 


270-280. 


ly. 


281-284. 


V. 



CONTENTS. vii 

SECTION PAGE 

245-248. III. The Great Rebellion and the Commonwealth . 272 
249-250. IV. The Restoration and the Revolution . . .276 
251-254. V. Constitutional Gains 278 

CHAPTER IV. — EROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 
TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

General Characteristics 281 

The Age of Louis XIV — French Leadership . 282 

The Rise of Russia 288 

The Rise of Prussia 291 

The Expansion of England 299 



PAET III. — THE AGE OF NATION STATES. 

CHAPTER I. —THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

285-287. I Fundamental Characteristics 303 

288-312. II. Conditions before the Revolution . . . „ 305 
313-332. III. First Period, 1789-1792 : Constitutional Monarchy 323 
333-346. IV. Second Period, 1792-1795 : the First French Re- 
public under Revolutionary Government . . 341 
347-355. V. Third Period, 1795-1799: the Republic under the 

Directory 356 

356-375. VI. The Consulate and the Empire, 1799-1815 . . 363 

CHAPTER IL— THE PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. 

376-380. I. The Congress of Vienna — Rearrangements . . 382 
381-401. II. Attempts to maintain the System of 1815 . . 388 

CHAPTER III.— FRANCE SINCE 1815. 

402-412. L The "Divine Right" Monarchy, 1815-1830 . . 406 

413-418. II. The Constitutional Monarchy, 1830-1848 . . 413 
419-424. III. The Revolution of 1848 and the Second Republic, 

1848-1852 417 

425-432. IV. The Second Empire, 1852-1870 . . . .422 
433-451. V. The Third Republic, to the Present Time . . 430 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE IV.— CENTRAL EUROPE SINCE 1848. 



SECTION 

452-456. 
457-463. 
464-471. 
472-487. 
488-490. 
491-493. VI. . Austria-Hungary since 1848 



I. The Revolutions of 1848 and the Restorations 

II. The Unification of Italy . 

III. Tlie Unification of Germany . 

IV. The German Empire since 1871 
V. Italy since 1870 . 



PAGE 

449 

457 
466 
478 
494 



CHAPTER v.— THE SMALL STATES OF WESTERN 
EUROPE. 

495-504. I. The Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal . . 504 

505-511. II. Holland and Belgium 515 

512-520. in. The Swiss Republic 519 

'521-526. IV. The Scandinavian Kingdoms 527 



CHAPTER VL — ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH 
CENTURY. 

527-528. L Conditions in 1815 

Political Reform 

Legislation for Social Reform, to 1884 . 
The Irish Question .... 

English Politics in the Twentieth Century 
Colonies and Dependencies . 



529-540. 


II. 


541-548. 


III. 


549-552. 


IV. 


553-555. 


V. 


556-564. 


VI. 



533 
542 
558 
569 
574 
576 



CHAPTER VIL — SLAV EUROPE. 

565-575. I. Russia .583 

576-582. II. The Balkan States 597 

CHAPTER VIIL— THE NEW AGE: A SUMMARY OF 
CONDITIONS AND PROBLEMS. 

583-584. I. European Alliances 608 

585-591. II. The Expansion of Europe into Africa and Asia . 610 
592-594. III. Moral and Scientific Movements, and the Outlook 618 

Bibliography 627 

INDEX AND PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY . . .637 



MAPS. 

All the maps, with two exceptions (Nos. 4 and 14) , are full-page maps. 
Nos. 15, 23, 31, 34, 37, and 39 are double-page maps. 

PAGB 

1. The Carolingian Realms at the Division of Verdun, 843. 

Colored facing 10 

2. European Peoples about 900. Colored . . . facing 14 

3. England about 900 17 

4. The Empire of Knut the Great 20 

5. Political Divisions of Europe about 900. Colored . facing 50 

6. The Holy Roman Empire, 962-1000. Colored . . facing 63 

7. German Colonization on the East, 800-1400. Colored faring 71 

8. The Holy Roman Empire in the Eleventh Century, in the Time 

of Henry III. Colored facing 73 

9. Italy in the Time of the Hohenstaufen. Colored . facing 93 

10. Germany and Italy during the Interregnum, 1254-1273. Colored 

facing 96 

1 1 . The Eastern Empire in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries . 101 

12. Europe and Other Mediterranean Lands by Religions, about 

1100 (Time of the First Crusade). Colored . facing 102 

13. The Crusading Latin States in Syria 108 

14. The Latin Empire at Constantinople, 1204-1260, with Neigh- 

boring States .......... 110 

15. Dominions of the Hansa and of the Teutonic Order. Colored 

following 130 

16. England and France at Different Periods (a Series of Four 

Maps). Colored facing 164 

17. The Spanish Kingdoms of the Middle Ages. Colored facing 169 

18. Europe toward the Year 1400. Colored . . . facing 173 

19. The Swiss Confederacy, 1291-1500 175 

20. Southeastern Europe at the entrance of the Ottoman Turks. 

Colored facing 185 

21. The Ottoman Dominions at their Greatest Extent . . . 186 

22. Europe in the Time of Charles V. Colored . . facing 189 

23. Germany about 1550. Colored following 233 

24. The Netherlands at the Truce of 1609 ... . . .243 

25. Territorial Changes effected by the Thirty Years' War. Colored 

facing 252 
ix 



MAPS. 



PAGE 

facing 284 

. 297 

facing 364 

facing 378 

facing 388 



26. Europe, 1740-1789. Colored . 

27. Prussia at the Death of Frederick the Great 

28. Europe in 1802. Colored .... 

29. Europe in 1810. Colored .... 

30. Europe in 1815. Colored .... 

31. The Germanic Confederation from 1815 to 1867. Colored 

follovnng 893 

32. The Growth of Italian Unity 465 

33. Prussia, 1807-1871 473 

34. The German Empii-e since 1871. Colored . . following 480 

35. Austria-Hungary, to show Race Distribution. Colored facing 500 

36. The Balkan States after 1878-1881. Colored . . facing 597 

37. Europe about 1900. Colored following 604 

38. Africa in 1900. Colored facing 611 

39. The World in 1900, to show the Possessions of the World 

Powers. Colored . . . ' . . . . following 614 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

1. Remains of the Viking Ship found at Gokstad . 

2. Conway Castle (a typical feudal castle). Prom Old England 

3. Plan of a Medieval Castle of the Larger Sort, with Moat and 

Drawbridge. Prom Gautier's La Chevalrie 

4. Drawbridge and Portcullis. Prom Gautier's La Chevalrie 

5. Guy's Tower, Warwick Castle. From Old England 

6. Kenilwoi'th Castle To-day ....... 

7. Kenil worth Castle, as it appeared in 1620; after a fresco paint 

ing of that date. From Old England .... 

8. Stoke Castle. A modest manor house of the thirteenth century 

From Turner's Domestic Architecture 

9. Interior of the Hall of Stoke Castle 

10. Dancers. As represe]ited in an English manuscript of the thir 

teenth century. From Lacroix, Moetirs, Usages, etc. 

11. A Court Fool. After a medieval miniature in brilliant colors 

12. Ancient Manor House, Melichope, England ; in its present 

condition. From Wright's Homes of Other Days 

13. Interior View of a Window in Melichope Manor House 



14 

22 

23 
24 
25 
26 

27 

28 
29 

35 
36 

40 
41 



ILLUSTRATIONS. xi 



14. One of the Open Fields of the Manor of Lower Heyford, Ox- 

fordshire. 'From Aiidveiv''s History of England . . 42 

15. A Reaper's Cart. After Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life ; 

from a fourteentli century manuscript .... 43 

16. Falconry. From a medieval manuscript reproduced by Lacroix 45 

17. Knight in Armor. From Lacroix, Vie 3Iilitaire ... 46 

18. Monks busy in Field Labor. From Lacroix ; after a thirteenth 

century French manuscript ....... 47 

19. The Temporal and the Spiritual Power ; a mosaic of the tenth 

century in the Church of St. John, Rome. From Lacroix 68 

20. The Court of Lions, Alhambra 9!) 

21. Doorway to the Hall of the Ambassadors, Alhambra . . IOC 

22. Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem ; present condition 104 

23. A Crusader's Effigy. Funeral slab in Salisbury Cathedral . Ill 

24. Old Street in Rouen ; present condition 118 

25. Town Hall, Oudenarde, about 1525. From Liibke . . . 120 

26. Ruins of a Rhine Castle, with a Modern Town below . . 123 

27. St. Mark's, Venice 128 

28. Windows of a House in Venice. Twelfth century. From Ruskin 129 

29. Windows of Venetian Palace. Thirteenth century. From 

Ruskin 130 

30. Interior of Hall of Merchant Princes at Dantzig. From Liibke 131 

31. Battle of Hastings. Bayeux Tapestry. From Old England . 136 

32. William the Conqueror and the Pope's Consecrated Banner. 

From the Bayeux Tapestry ...... 137 

33. A Norman Ship. From the Bayeux Tapestry .... 138 

34. Norman Doorway, St. Peter's, Northampton. ~Erom Old England 139 

35. Silver Penny of William I . . . . . . . .140 

36. Silver Penny of Stephen 140 

37. Stephen. After an engraving based on a coin portrait . . 141 

38. EfBgy of Henry II. From his tomb. From Old England . 143 

39. Sections of Magna Carta in Facsimile 147 

40. A Fourteenth Century Bridge in Rural England, near Danby 

in Oxfordshire. From J nssemnd'' s English Wayfaring Life 152 

41. Seals of Edward III ; before and after the assumption of the 

arms of France 153 

42. An English Carriage of the Fourteenth Century. After Jus- 

serand's English Wayfaring Life ; from a fourteenth cen- 
tury psalter 154 

43. The Parliament of 1399, which deposed Richard II. From Old 

England^ which follows a contemporary manuscript . .159 



xii ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

44. Hall of the Cloth-makers' Guild at Ypres. From Liibke . . 178 

45. Monk teaching the Globe. After a thirteenth century manu- 

script. From Lacroix, Science and Literature . . . 194 

46. Seal of the Faculty of Theology of Paris. Fourteenth century. 

From Lacroix, Science cmd Literature .... 197 

47. Seal of the Picardy Nation, University of Paris. Fourteenth 

century. From Lacroix 198 

48. Illustration from a Fifteenth Century Manuscript. From La- 

croix, Vie Militaire 211 

49. Salisbury Cathedral, from the Southeast. Built 1200-1250. 

From Cathedral Churches of England .... 212 

50. Salisbury Cathedral. View from south to north transept . 213 

51. The Cloisters, Salisbury Cathedral 214 

52. Cathedral of Kheims 215 

53. Church of Saint-Maclou at Rouen. Fifteenth century . . 216 

54. A Lower Corner of the Ducal Palace, Venice • . . .217 

55. Charles I. After a painting by Van Dyck .... 273 

56. Cromwell. After the painting by Sir Peter Lely . . . 275 

57. Louis XIV 287 

58. Church of St. Basil, Moscow . . . . . . .288 

59. Peter the Great. After a portrait by Kneller .... 289 

60. Frederick the Great. After a painting by Ramberg . . . 293 

61. Voltaire 316 

62. Napoleon at Areola. After the painting by Gros . . . 360 

63. The Vendome Column, Paris 367 

64. Arch of Triumph, Paris ...... o . 369 

65. Napoleon toward the Close of his Rule . . . . ■ . 379 

66. Napoleon III 424 

67. "France is Tranquil." A cartoon from Harper''s Magazine, 

representing France under Napoleon III .... 426 

68. Mazzini 458 

69. Victor Emmanuel II .460 

70. Cavour 461 

71. Garibaldi 463 

72. Bismarck 475 

73. Proclamation of the German Empire 476 

74. William I of Prussia 477 

75. First Adhesive Penny Postage Stamp 564 

76. Sir Robert Peel 565 

77. Gladstone 568 

78. The First Railway Passenger Train 619 



MODERN HISTORY. 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE ELEMENTS, THE FIELD, AND THE PERIODS. 

The chief interest in history lies in the fact that it is not yet finished. 

— Ashley. 

1. A Summary of Earlier Progress.^ — Seven thousand years 
ago the Nile and Euphrates valleys developed an imposing 
material civilization: men learned to practise many arts and 
crafts, to build roads and canals, and, Avith ships and caravans, 
to seek out the treasures of distant regions ; while the accumu- 
lated wealth was spent by the rulers with gorgeous pomp and 
splendor. War and trade carried this culture slowly around 
the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean ; and, before 1500 B.C., 
Phoenician colonists had scattered its seeds widely in many 
regions. A thousand years later, Persia saved the slow gains 
of ages from barbarian ravagers, and united and organized the 
civilized East under an improved political system. All this 
Oriental civilization, however, was marred by serious imperfec- 
tions : its governments were despotic ; its art was conventional 
and monstrous ; its thought, extravagant and superstitious. 
At best, its benefits were for the few ; it was uniform and 
passive; and it threatened to become stagnant. Among the 
Hebrews, it is true, there had grown up a pure religion whose 
truth and grandeur were to influence profoundly the future 

1 The story of this earlier progress has been told in a preceding volume of 
this series of histories, — West's Ancient History. Reference will be made to 
that volume simply as Ancient History. 

1 



2 MODERN HISTORY — INTRODUCTION. [§ 1 

world, but for centuries to come it was to remain an exclusive 
possession of one small people.^ 

But now appeared a new culture. A widely diffused Euro- 
pean civilization had been rising slowly, through obscure 
periods of time. It borrowed from the East; but from the 
first it had its own peculiar traits : it was marked by diversity, 
freedom, and active energy, and intellectually by moderation' 
and naturalness.^ In the hands of the Greeks, about 500 e.g., 
this culture burst into sudden bloom. Then for nearly two 
hundred years it wrestled with Persia in war; and finally, 
through the genius of Alexander, it welded East and West 
into a Graeco-Oriental world. 

In the end, however, the huge passive East would have 
absorbed the small Greek creative element, had not the latter 
found reenforcement from the second peninsula of Southern 
Europe. Rome, drawing largely from the Greek culture, gave 
a Latin civilization to the western Mediterranean coasts, and 
then combined the Latin West with the older Greek East into 
a Graeco-Eoman world. The Roman Empire embraced the 
Mediterranean fringe of the three Old-World continents, — a 
broad belt stretching from the Euphrates to Britain, between 
the southern deserts and the northern waters of the Rhine, 
the Danube, and the Black Sea. In language and culture, the 
West remained Latin, and the East, Greek ; but in politics and 
law and in patriotic sentiment, the fusion was complete. 

For nearly four centuries after the birth of Christ this vast 
region rested in peace and prosperity, while, under the favorable 
conditions of this social unity, Christianity grew np and spread 
victoriously over the civilized world. Then, happily not until 
then, the Empire began to disintegrate, and there came upon the 
stage two new forces, the Teuton and the Slav, and soon after a 
third in Mohammedanism. In four frightful centuries of invasion 
and disorder, Asia and Africa became the prey of the Moham- 
medan and were wholly lost to our western civilization, while 

I Ancient History, §§ 67, 78, 506. ^Ancient History, §§ 80, 81. 



§2] THE ELEMENTS, THE FIELD, THE PERIODS. 3 

the two halves of Europe fell asunder, — Southeastern Europe 
becoming Slavic-Greek, and Western Europe Romano-Teutonic. 

From this time, it is this Western Europe and its offshoots 
with which history is chiefly concerned. At first it seemed sub- 
merged in barbarism, but gradually two new organizing forces 
grew up, — the papacy and the kingdom of the Franks, — and 
the restoration of the Roman Empire by Charlemagne and the 
Pope, in the year 800, marks the successful fusion of the old and 
new elements in the West. This event, therefore, makes a con- 
venient close for the great period of human development that 
we call Ancient History. In that period the various forces that 
were tc make our western world of to-day had been brought 
together. The subsequent working of these forces is the theme 
of Modern History,^ and will be treated in the present volume. 

2. The Stage and the Actors in Modern History. — For nine 
hundred of its eleven hundred years since 800 a.d., human 
progress was made almost wholly within the limits of the 
Eomano-Teutonic Empire of Charlemagne and in its fringes in 
the new Teutonic states of England and of the Scandinavian 
peninsulas. The scene of history had shifted to the west and 
had shrunken in size. Some Teutonic districts outside the old 
Roman world had been added; but vast areas of the Roman 
territory itself had been abandoned,^ and the Mediterranean — 



1 The seven centuries from 800 to 1500 are sometimes classed, with the four 
centuries of disorder before Charlemagne, as the Middle Age. The three hun- 
dred years from 800 to 1100, in their gloom and disorder, do resemble the 
unhappy period from 400 to 800 ; and indeed, in accordance with recognized 
custom, this volume sometimes uses the term " medieval " to cover the thou- 
sand or eleven hundred years of fusion and reorganization that intervene 
between the progressive period of the ancient world and the progress of the 
modern world since 1500. However, in order to bring out more clearly the 
real value and meaning of these intermediate centuries, this volume prefers to 
regard the four hundred years before Charlemagne as the close of Ancient 
History, and the period after Charlemagne as the beginning of Modern His- 
tory (of. Ancient History, §§ 4 and 595, note 2). 

2 The Euphrates, the Nile, the eastern Mediterranean, all Asia with East- 
ern Europe to the Adriatic, and Africa with Western Europe to the Pyrenees, 
were gone. 



4 MODERN HISTORY — INTRODUCTION. [§ 3 

tlie center of the old Roman world — liad become an ill- 
defended moat between Christian Europe and Mohammedan 
Africa, while its place as the highway of civilization was taken 
over, as well as might be, by the Rhine and the ISTorth Sea. 

In the later centuries of the modern era, it is true, esjjecially 
in the last two hundred years, this little Europe was to expand 
marvelously over new continents and to replace the Eoman 
Mediterranean and the Teutonic Ehine by the mightier high- 
ways of the Atlantic and Mississippi, by the passage round the 
Cape, and by the Indian Ocean, To-day, too, we are in the 
throes of a yet more wondrous growth; and all eyes center 
upon the Pacific, where ancient civilized peoples of the Far 
East, — unknown to either Alexander or to Eome, — are about 
to mingle their life with ours. But when Modern History 
began, all this growth was hidden in the distant future. For 
almost a thousand years, even the eastern half of Christian 
Europe was to count for little in our development: not until 
the nineteenth century, indeed, were the great Slav empire of 
the North and the new Slav and Greek nations of Southeastern 
Europe to be drawn into the current of our civilization. And 
with all the expansion of the stage in these later times, the 
chief actors, so far, have been the Teutonic and the Latin peo2')les, 
and their descendants in the neiv regions of the ivorld to ivhich 
Europeayi culture has recently been transjolanted. 

3. The Inheritance with which Modern History began. — 
Through Rome, the western peoples were also the heirs of 
Greek mind and Oriental hand,^ but much of this inheritance 
was to be recovered only in later times. In 800 a.d., Europe 
was still sunk deep in the barbarism that followed the long 
anarchy of the invasions, and the brief revival of Charlemagne 
had not gone far toward restorins^ civilization. Schools and 



1 " There was a great heritage of manual skill and mechanical arts which 
had heen slowly built up in Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, and Carthage, and 
which was incorporated in the culture which the Romans diffused ; and it may 
be doubted if any of the industrial arts known and practised bj^ the Romans 
was wholly lost in the West." — Cunijingham, Western Civilization, II, 6. 



§4] THE ELEMENTS, THE FIELD, THE PERIODS. 5 

learning were almost extinct ; commerce hardly existed ; com- 
munication between district and district was almost impossible ; 
money was so scarce that revenue had to be collected in prod- 
uce; and manners and morals were alike deplorable. When 
we turn from the darker side to count the positive institu- 
tions with which Modern History began, we observe (1) the 
Christian church, with the papacy and monasticism; (2) the 
Empire; (3) the remains of municipal life in Southern 
Europe ; (4) the serf organization of labor ; (5) the new nobil- 
ity, with the germs of the coming feudal system ; (6) a new 
Komano-Teutonic kingship; and (7) popular assemblies of 
freemen. ■• There was also for all educated men a common 
language, the Latin, and, through it, a common culture. 

4. The Course of Development after Charlemagne." — Modern 
History at first sight seems a patliless maze, — many threads 
of development crossing each other in curious tangles. For 
our purpose, however, we may find a guide through the laby- 
rinth by fixing our attention upon the successive ways in which 
European society has organized itself. (1) First we see a single 
Latin Christendom, bound together feebly by the church, but, 
for most political purposes, broken into innumerable fragments 
under aristocratic rulers. (2) Then, Christendom divided into 
two camps, but at the same time the small ^'feudal" units 
combined into a feio large states ruled by monarchs. (3) Lastly, 
the peoples in these new units took the final control of the 
government into their own hands, and the monarchic states 
became nation-states. These three great forms of European 
society give us a basis for dividing Modern History. 

a. For seven hundred years after the disappearance of Charlemagne's 
Empire, Western Europe found its chief bond of union in the Roman 



1 Such assemblies on a national scale were soon to die out, but local assem- 
blies, especially in the English counties, were to have important influence on 
later political development. Ancient History, §§ 613, 614. 

2 This section may be read now by students ; but they should not be obliged 
to reproduce it ; and it will have more meaning as the stages of development 
are reached. 



6 MODERN HISTORY — INTRODUCTION. [§ 4 

(Latin) diurch. Through this organization it formed one Latin Christen- 
dom. Nations were not yet made. Not Britain or Italy or France, but 
Christendom, was tlie true fatherland for men and the true object of 
patriotism. The period falls into two main subdivisions. (1) From 
814 to about 1100, we have three centuries of "Dark Ages," caused by a 
new series of barbarian invasions and continued by the "feudal " violence 
of the local military organization that society adopted to ward off these 
invasions. (2) From 1100 to 1500, Europe was astir with new impulses 
to progress, — intellectual, commercial, and political. ^ Town life, uni- 
versities, new religious movements in and out of the church, new princi- 
ples of government, the rediscovery of Greek learning, new literature, 
new art, new inventions, greater material wealth and comfort, were 
making over society. 

The first two centuries of this period, from 1100 to 1300, were the age of 
the crusades, which tremendously augmented all the impulses to change, 
and these two hundred years are sometimes treated as a distinct period. 
Some writers, indeed, close the first great age with the crusades, and 
make the two hundred years from 1300 to 1520 the beginning of the next 
age, — to which they certainly bear a strong likeness in many features. 
For our purpose, however, it is more convenient to follow the more gen- 
eral custom, and to class these two centuries with the preceding ones. 
It should be cleaiiy seen, of course, that they contained the forces which 
were to bring that age to a close. They prepared the "Reformation," 
and formed the transition to the next great period, the second of the 
three into which we divide Modern History. 

b. A number of remarkable events group themselves near the end of 
the fifteenth century : the invention of printing ; the use of gunpowder, 
which destroyed the superiority of the knight in armor ; the discovery of 
America (1492) ; the definite beginning of the Reformation (1520) ; and 
the consolidation of strong monarchic governments, in England under the 
Tudors, in France under Louis XI, and in Spain under Ferdinand and 
Isabella. These events, and the forces that grew out of them, revealed a 
new world of thought and feeling, as well as a new physical hemisphere, 
and Europe passed into a new age, with a new form of social organiza- 
tion. Latin Christendom was broken into two camps by the Protestant 



1 The church remained the central fact for Europe all through these cen- 
turies, although its importance is greatly obscured iu the first sub-period by 
the disorder and violence in society, and in the closing part of the second sub- 
period by the rising intellectual revolt which was to disrupt it and by the 
rising monarchies which were soon to displace it as the type of European 
organization. 



§5] THE ELEMENTS, THE FIELD, THE PERIODS. 7 

Reformation. The church, so far as it had represented the chief social 
organization, gave way to monarchic "states," which remained tlie form 
under which society progressed for the next three centuries, down to 
the French Revolution (1789). The intermarriages and treaty relations 
of the ruling families, and the policy of preserving the "balance of power," 
led to the beginning of modern international law, and in some measure 
preserved the unity of Europe. 

The age was one of almost constant war : during the first half of the 
period, — to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), — the wars largely grew 
out of religious differences ; in the second half, they grew out of the 
personal ambitions of the ruling monarchs, the commercial jealousies 
between the different countries, and the rivalry for the new worlds east 
and west. 

c. The last century of the second age (the eighteenth century) showed 
a rising consciousness of the rights of the people. i All over Europe, 
governments took a new tone toward the subject masses, acknowledging 
the duty of governing /o?- them, and despots undertook great paternal and 
beneficent reforms (§ 280). In France, in the last years of the eighteenth 
century, this movement was suddenly taken up by the people themselves ; 
and after the French Revolution, monarchic states gave way rapidly to 
nation-states, — the form in which society organizes itself to-day. ^ 

5. The Divisions of Modern History in this Volume. — Thus 
the progress in Modern History has been from theocracy and 
feudal aristocracy to monarchy and then to democracy. This 
vohime will treat Modern History under the following great 
divisions : — 

1 In England, which at this time was far ahead of the rest of Europe politi- 
cally, the king had already ceased to be the state ; but even in England until 
well into the nineteenth century, no large part of the nation had really entered 
into political power. 

2 Louis XIV of France (1643-1715) could say with perfect truth, " I am the 
State." To-day in nearly all civilized countries the nations are the " states." 
Some thinkers urge that our nation-states are not the final or the ideal 
form of social organization, and that they are even now tending to give way 
to a higher form in greater race federations (Teutonic, Latin, Slav), or in 
that supreme "federation of the world" of which Tennyson wrote. The 
student of history will learn not to look upon any social form as unchangeable. 

" Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be. 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 
And Thou, O God, art more than they." 



8 MODERN HISTORY — INTRODUCTION. [§ 5 

Part I. Latin Christendom, from Charlemagne to Luther 
(seven centuries), 814-1520: Europe a theocracy, modi- 
fied by the disorder of local feudal aristocracy, and, toward 
the close, by the development of monarchic states. 

1. A new series of ''Dark Ages," from the I^orse 

invasions to the crusades, or the age of Feudal- 
ism (three hundred years), 814-1100. 

2. Four hundred years of slow revival, 1100-1520, 

the first half known as the period of the crusades 
and the latter part as the Renaissance. 
Part II. Monarchic States : the disriqjtion of Christendom and 
the rise of European monarchies, 1520-1789. 

1. The Reformation and wars of religion, 1520-1648. 

2. Dynastic and commercial wars, 1648-1789 : colonial 

expansion. 
Part III. Nation States : recent and contemporary Europe 
from the French Revolution to to-day, 1789-1904 : rising 
democracy in politics and in industry; political federal 
tion ; territoricd expansion ; marvelous growth in wealth 
and population.^ 

1 With reference to the proportion of space given to these periods in this 
boolc, see the Preface. 



PAKT I. 

LATIN OHEISTENDOM— PEOM OHAELEMAaNE 
TO LUTHER. 



< 



CHAPTER I. 

A NE"W SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 
I. DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE. 

6. The Failure of Charlemagne. — Charlemagne died iu 814 
A.D., and his Empire did not long survive him. His brilliant 
attempt to organize Western Europe was to carry mighty in- 
fluences on into coming centuries/ but at the moment it seemed 
to have been only a glorious failure. There followed a long 
period of reaction toward barbarism, — an age of turmoil, igno- 
rance, ferocity, and misery. Not until well toward the close 
of the eleventh century did civilization again reach so fair a 
promise. The decline and disruption of the Empire were due 
partly to internal conditions and partly to a new series of bar- 
barian invasions (§§ 7-17). 

7. Internal Causes of the Political Decline. — The only natural 
tie between the widespreading regions of the Empire of Charle- 
magne had been the common religion. The various sections 
differed in race,^ in language, and in custom and law; and 

1 Cf. Ancient Historij, § 649. The Empire of Charlemagne is a point of 
light between the four centuries tliat precede and the two or three that follow. 

2 With wise moderation Charlemagne had refrained from adding territory 
outside of that in which the Teutons had in some degree established them- 
selves (Ancient History, §§ 639, 640) ; but, of course, not to note minor dis- 
tinctions, there were wide differences between the pure Germans of Saxony 

9 



10 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 8 

these differences were already creating local and tribal feeling, 
which in some districts was to grow later into national patriot- 
ism. The different parts of the Empire, too, were fitted by 
nature to be the homes of distinct peoples; and the old Roman 
bonds of trade and travel had long gone to decay. Charle- 
magne's tremendous energy and broad tolerance held his do- 
minions together during his life, but time was not given him 
to change these adverse conditions. 

Moreover, Frankish feeling demanded that each son of a king 
should inherit part of his father's realm. It was only by acci- 
dent that Charlemagne himself had succeeded to the undivided 
Frankish state, and only the death of his two elder sons en- 
abled him to transmit the Empire unbroken ^ to his surviving 
heir, Louis the Pious. The reign of this weak prince made 
melancholy shipwreck amid the quarrels of his sons over their 
inheritance. Seven distinct plans of partition were tried in 
twenty-seven years (between 817 and 843), and most of them 
were accompanied by bloody civil war. 

8. The New Map of Europe: the Treaty of Verdun. — The 
greatest of these struggles closed with the Treaty of Verclim, in 
843. This treaty began the map of modern Europe. Lothair, 
the eldest grandson of Charlemagne, held the title of Emperor, 
and therefore wished to retain the two imperial capitals, Eome 
and Aachen. Accordingly, in this division, he kept Italy (that 
part of it which had belonged to the Empire) and a narrow 
"strip of land from Italy to the North Sea. This northern 
strip lay in the valley of the Ehone and in the western valley 
of the Rhine, and so included Burgundy and old Austrasia. 
The rest of the Empire was made into two kingdoms — that of 
the East Franks and that of the West Franks — for Lothair's 

and Bavaria, with their unmixed Teutonic speech, and the Latinized Lom- 
bards of Italy or the Romanized Gauls of Aquitaine, with their growing 
"Romance" languages (based on the old Latin, but modified by Teutonic 
influences). See Ancient History, §§ 590 and 616, and compare the map 
opposite this page with that facing page 14. 

1 Special report : Charlemagne's plan for partition in 806 ; see especially 
Emerton's Medieval Europe, 9-12. 



§9] DISRUPTION OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE. 11 

two brothers. Lotliair's intermediate strip contained the dis- 
tricts where the Eoman and Teutonic elements had most inter- 
mingled. Thus the eastern and western kingdoms were left 
sharply contrasted, while each in itself was fairly homogeneous 
in race and compact in territory, and so fitted for independent 
development. The eastern kingdom lay beyond the Rhine 
and was purely German : it was to grow into the Kingdom of 
the Germans. The western kingdom had more mixture of 
race ; the Teutonic elements, however, were being absorbed 
rapidly, and it corresponded fairly with the extent of the new 
French language then just rising.^ It was finally to take the 
name of France. 

9. Continued Disruption of the Middle-land. — The Treaty of Verdun 
was followed by many more partitions between the degenerate Carolin- 
gians ; but the lines it had laid down were in the main to prevail, and to 
it most of the present states of Western Europe can trace their origin. 

Lotliair's Middle Kingdom was to prove the weakest of the three great 
states created by the treaty. Its ruler was supposed to hold some vague 
suzerainty over the other two kings ; but this unwieldy middle-land 
lacked unity, both in geography and in race. Italy almost at once fell 
away from the rest ; and then the northern district, intermediate between 
France and Germany and drawn to both sides, crumbled into fragments 
doomed to absorption in their stronger neighbors. On the whole, the 
middle-land v^^as more German than French, and most of it soon became 
attached to the eastern kingdom (§§ 48-64 6.). Some centuries later, 

1 The " Oath of Strasburg," between two of the brothers during the war, 
to confirm their alliance against the third, shows the growing difference 
between the languages spoken in the eastern and western parts of the Empire. 
Charles, the king of Neustria (the land of the West Franks), swore in the 
language of his brother's German army, and Lewis, king of Bavaria (East 
Franks) , swore in the Neustrian tongue, so that each army might know what 
was promised by the other party. The double oath begins : — 

" Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro coramun salva- 

"In Godes minna ind in thes christianes folches ind unser hedhero gehalt- 

ment dist di in avant in quant Deus savir," etc. 

nissi fon thesemo dage frammordes so fram so mir God gewizci," etc. 

These are the earliest records in the French and German tongues. The 
French is half way between Latin and modern Frencli. See Emerton's 
Medieval Europe, 25-28, or Munro's Middle Ages, 19-20, for the story of tlie 
oaths, with the full text and the translation. 



12 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 10 

France began to seize parts of it, and, ever since, it has been a debatable 
land. From it came the many "Little Kingdoms " that were to confuse 
the map and the politics of Europe for centuries, — Savoy, Aries, Pro- 
vence, Lotharingia (Lorraine), Franche Comt6, and so on. Three of 
these small states survive, — in modern Holland, Belgium, and Switzer- 
land. Another (Savoy, §§ 457, 463) was to grow into the modern king- 
dom of Italy ; and others lie at the root of the Alsace-Lorraine trouble 
of to-day. 

10. The Later Carolingians. — One cause of the decline of the 
age was the incapacity of the later Carolingians, as compared 
with the great founders of their house. For a century after 
Verdun, politica.1 history is little more than a tangle of fero- 
cious and treacherous family quarrels. Early Carolingians 
had won such surnames as "the Hammer" and "the Great": 
their descendants were known as "the Bald," "the Simple," 
"the Fat," "the Stammerer," "the Child," "the Lazy." The. 
numerous branches of the family died out, one by one ; and in 
911 ill Germany and in 987 in France, and still earlier in some 
of the small states, the nobles elected native princes from 
among their own number, and so founded national dynasties. 

Exercise. — Draw the Division of Verdun from memory, preferably 
upon " outline maps," with about the same degree of detail as that in the 
map facing page 10. 

For Further Reading. — Students may profitably consult one or two 
of the following : Oman, Dark Ages, 383-445 ; Emerton, Iledieval Europe, 
14-35 ; Church, Beginnings of the Middle Ages, 140-156 ; Bemont and 
Monod, 3Iedieval Europe, 211-228 ; Duruy, Middle Ages, 139-155. An 
excellent discussion of the period is given in Adams, Civilization., ch. viii. 

n. THE NEW BARBARIAN ATTACK. 

From the fury of the Northmen, Lord, deliver us. — Prayer in church 
service of the tenth century. 

11. Renewal of the Invasions. — The distracted Europe of the 
ninth century was endangered also by a new peril. Once more 
barbarian invasion threatened the civilized world. The Caro- 
lingian kings, instead of combining against the barbarians, only 
strove the more desperately to plunder one another, each ona 



§13] THE NEW BAEBARIAN ATTACK. 13 

taking advantage of the others' misfortunes. Even within one 
kingdom, the people of different sections felt no common interest 
in repelling the attack, but selfishly allowed their neighbors to 
suffer, until the evil reached themselves. Moreover, there was 
no organized post to carry news, and the roads were so poor 
that troops could hardly be collected quickly enough to meet 
the scattered and swift attacks. 

Thus Europe seemed at the mercy of the invaders. On the 
east, hordes of wild Slavs and of wilder Hungarians broke 
across the frontiers, ravaged Germany, and penetrated some- 
times even to Rome or to Toulouse in southern France; the 
Mohammedan Moors from Africa attacked Italy, Sicily, and 
southern France, establishing themselves firmly in many dis- 
tricts and turning the Mediterranean into a Mohammedan lake ; 
fierce Norse pirates harried every coast, and, swarming up the 
rivers, pierced the heart of the land. 

The Slavs and Moors had appeared earlier in history ; ^ but 
two of the invaders were fresh forces in European develop- 
ment (§§ 12, 13). 

12. The Hungarians (Magyars) were a Turanian people. 
They resembled the Huns in customs and character, and, 
though not closely connected with them, they probably be- 
longed to the same Tartar-Finnish stock. Advancing west- 
ward from their old homes in the Ural-Volga country, they 
reached the upper Danube in 889, and for the next sixty years 
they proved the most terrible scourge that Europe had ever 
known. They were small, active nomads, moving swiftly on 
scraggy ponies, — slaying, burning, carrying off captives and 
all movable plunder, and laying waste the land. 

13. The Norsemen were a new branch of the Teutons, and the 
fiercest and wildest of that race.^ They dwelt in the Scandi- 

1 Ancient Histonj, §§ 569, 626, note, and 640. 

2 Ancient History, §§ 555-561. There is a fine description of the Northmen 
in Green's Conquest of England, 50-59. See also Boyesen's Story of Norway, 
Johnson's Normans, Mabie's Norse Stories Retold, Jiriczek's Northern Hero 
Legends, and the Story of the Burnt-Njal. 



14 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§13 



navian peninsulas, and were still heathen. They had taken 
no part in the earlier Teutonic invasions ; but, in the ninth 
century, population was becoming too crowded for the scanty 
resources of their bleak lands, and they were driven to seek 
new homes. Moreover, at this time, leaders arose, — their 
imagination kindled, perhaps, by the achievement of Charle- 
magne, — to unite the independent and scattered tribes into 
kingdoms; and the more adventurous spirits among the con- 
quered turned to the sea to preserve their independence. 
Some of them colonized distant Iceland, — pilgrims, in a fash- 
ion, for liberty's sake, — and set up there a free republic; but 
the greater number resorted to a life of warfare and plunder at 

the expense ^ of richer 
countries.^ The Swedes 
expanded to the east, 
conquering the Finns 
and Slavs, while the 
Danes and Norwegians 
turned toward the west. 
The Norse ships were 
long, open boats, sev- 
enty-five feet by twelve 
or fifteen, carrying a 
single square sail, but 
driven for the most part 
by thirty or forty long oars. They could be beached on any 
but the rockiest coast, or they could be run far up the rivers. 
A boat bore perhaps eighty warriors ; and each man was per- 
fectly clad in ring mail and steel helmet, and armed with 
lance, knife, bow, and the terrible Danish axe. Daring, indeed, 
were the long voyages of the Northmen in their frail craft. 
Often they were tossed in ruin by the fierce storms of the north- 
ern seas ; but the survivors, rallying again around the chief- 

1 Of course, before this time tlie Norsemen laad spent their energies largely 
in plundering each other : the firmer government of the new king made this 
life less possible now at home, and they sought new fields. 




Remains of Viking Ship, found at Gokstad, 
Norway. It is of oak, unpainted ; length 
over all, 79 feet 4 inches, from stem to stern ; 
breadth of beam, I65 feet; perpendicular 
depth, 6 feet in the middle, 8J feet at the 
extremities. 



§14] THE NEW BARBAEIAN ATTACK. 15 

tain's vessel, laugliecl at winds and floods : " The blast," they 
sang, " aids our oars ; the hurricane is our servant and drives 
us whither we wish to go." 

14. The Norse Raids. — Fleets of these ''Vikings," or "sons 
of the fiords," sometimes counting hundreds of boats, some- 
times only two or three, set forth upon the " pathway of the 
swans" to plunder Western Europe, as their relatives, the 
Jutes and Saxons, had harassed Britain four hundred years 
earlier. There is a story that Charlemagne, from the coast of 
Gaul, once saw some Norse ships in the Mediterranean, and 
shed tears, predicting that after his death his kingdom would 
suffer unspeakable woes from those new foes. Certainly the 
great Emperor maintained fleets to prevent such pirate attacks ; 
but in the quarrels of his weak successors the Norsemen found 
their opportunity. Every part of the Empire felt their raids. 
They not only plundered the open country, but they sacked 
cities like Hamburg, Eouen, Paris, ISTantes, Bordeaux, Tours, 
Cologne. Within one period of a few years, they ravaged 
every town in old Austrasia, and finally stabled their horses in 
the cathedral of Aachen, about the tomb of Charlemagne. A 
characteristic sport of the raiders, according to popular stories, 
was to toss babes upon their spears, from point to point. 
Especially did they plunder and burn the churches and monas- 
teries, against which their heathen rage and scoffing were par- 
ticularly directed and wherein were collected the wealth and 
treasures of the day. Little wonder that when a band was 
defeated, the enraged people flayed captives alive and nailed 
their skins to the church doors. 

After a time, of course, like their earlier kinsmen, the Norse- 
men ceased to be mere plunderers, and became conquerors. 
They settled the Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, little patches 
on the north of Scotland, and the whole west of Ireland, and 
finally established themselves in the east of Britain and in the 
north of France. These two latter colonies were the last im- 
portant infusions of Teutonic blood into the old Koman world 
(§§ 15-16). 



16 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 15 

15. Rolf the Dane : Settlement in Normandy. — In 911, Charles 
the Simple, King of Prance, finally stopped the Norse raids in 
his country by establishing some of the Norse bands on the 
northern coast to defend it. He gave his daughter in marriage 
to their leader, Rolf (Rollo), on condition that Eolf accept 
Christianity, with his people, and acknowledge Charles as his 
overlord^ for his new dukedom. 

Normandy, as this district came to be called from its new 
inhabitants, was, of course, really an independent state. Its 
dukes maintained stern order ; and this security quickly peopled 
the land from the neighboring provinces, so that it became one 
of the most populous and prosperous parts of Europe. Churches 
and rich abbeys rose on every side; agriculture flourished; 
and the serfs grew into free peasants. The Norsemen them- 
selves, with peculiar adaptability, took on French customs and 
cultttre, adopted French language and French ideas, and as 
^'Normans" became the foremost champions of this civilization, 
even extending it into new lands. Indeed the most important 
results of the creation of Normandy were the subsequent Nor- 
man conquest of England (§§ 16, 123, 124) and of southern 
Italy (§ 67 &.), and the introduction of French civilization into 
those lands. 

16. England and the Danes and Normans. — The conquest of 
Britain in tl^e fifth and sixth centuries by the Angles and 
Saxons left the eastern half of the island divided into several 
petty German states,^ with numerous unconquered Celtic dis- 
tricts in the west. The German states farthest east — the 
Kentmen, South Saxons, East Saxons, and East Angles — 
were soon shut off from contact with the Celtic territory and 
ceased to grow ; but Wessex (the kingdom of the West Saxons) 
and Mercia and Northumbria (two of the kingdoms of the 
Angles) continued to expand at the expense of Celtic tribes. 
Plainly, leadership in the island was destined to fall to one of 

1 Special report: the story of Rolf's act of homage to Charles. 

2 For a brief account of the formation of these states, see Ancient History, 
§§ 591-594. 



§16] 



THE NEW BARBARIAN ATTACK. 



17 




18 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 16 

these three " mark " states.^ Thej had been struggling with 
each other for two centuries for the mastery, when, in 827, 
Egbert,^ King of Wessex, brought all the Teutonic kingdoms 
of the island under his authority. The union, however, was 
very imperfect. Egbert was simply a head king surrounded 
by jealous tributary kings, who might at any time break away 
from a weak ruler. 

This was the political situation when the Danish invasions 
began. These at first shattered the new-made union, but in 
the end they helped it to grow more complete. The story fills 
two centuries and a half, and falls into four chapters. 

a. First period : Danish settlements; division of the island; 
Alfred's reforms. The Danes had begun their raids in the 
time of Egbert, but they made no attempt at permanent settle- 
ment until 850, when a band wintered on the southeastern 
coast. Erom that time their attempts grew more and more 
eager, until in 871, after a series of great battles, in the last of 
which the King of Wessex was slain, they became for a time 
undisputed masters. 

This period was to close, however, with a division of the 
island into a Saxon South and a Danish North. The power of 
Wessex soon revived under Alfred the Great (871-901), brother 
of the slain king. Just after the Danish victory, Alfred had 
been driven into hiding in moors and fens ; but from his secret 
retreats he made many a daring sally, and finally he succeeded 
in reorganizing the Saxons and in defeating the Danish army 
(878).^ The Danes accepted Christianity, Avithdrew into the 
north, and, by the later Treaty of Wedmore (885), received for 
their own the territory north of the old Roman road from 
London to Chester (Watliug Street). 

The several kingdoms in the south now allowed themselves 
to be absorbed in Wessex, which plainly was their chief de- 

1 For tlie term ma7'k states, see Ancient History, § 276, note. 

2 Egbert had spent some years at the court of Chavlemague, and may have 
been influenced by the work of that ruler. 

8 Special report: anecdotes of Alfred during "this period of his life. 



§16] THE NEW BARBAKIAN ATTACK. 19 

fense against the invaders ; and Alfred's half of the island 
became one Saxon state. The rest of Alfred's life was given 
to strengthening his kingdom against the danger of future 
invasions and to removing the evil results of the desolating 
struggle. He reorganized the army, created an English navy, 
reformed many political and judicial institutions, and, in par- 
ticular, ardently encouraged the spread of learning among his 
people. His own day knew him by the honorable name of 
"Alfred the Truthteller " ; later generations looked back at 
him as ''England's Darling"; and few kings have so well 
deserved the title of " the Great." 

b. Second period : reconquest of the Danelagh. The Danish 
king in the north of the island was supposed to render some 
vague obedience to the Saxon king ; but in fact the Danelagh, 
or the land of the Danes' law, was an independent state, like 
Normandy in Erance. The second period of warfare (900-950) 
went to the reconquest of this Danelagh by the great successors 
of Alfred, — Edward the Unconquered, Athelstane the Glori- 
ous, and Edmund the Doer of Deeds. Of course this movement 
was welcome to the old English inhabitants of the northern 
districts ; but, along the eastern coast especially, the country 
had become largely Danish in blood and very completely so in 
character. Indeed, all the ruling class were Danes ; and, in 
spite of their nominal subjection to Wessex, these districts 
kept their hope of future independence. Still, under Edgar 
the Peaceful (957-975), the great-grandson of Alfred, the island 
rested in prosperity and order, and even the kings of the Celtic 
tribes in the far west and north came to Edgar's court to 
acknowledge his overlordship. 

c. Third period : conquest by Denmark. After Edgar, how- 
ever, there came a new era of civil strife, and under Ethelred 
the Redeless (Ethelred, the man "without counsel"), the island 
was conquered (1002-1016) by Swegn and Knut, kings of Den- 
mark. Denmark had now become a united Christian kingdom, 
and this conquest in the eleventh century was not for Danish 
settlement, like that of the ninth century : it was for the 



20 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§16 



purpose of making England a part of a great Scandinavian 
Empire. 

d. TJie Norman Conquest. Knut the Great (1016-1035) 
proved a wise ruler and a true English king; but his sons 
were unworthy successors, and in 1042 the Witan^ of the 



^^^r 



Empire of 

KNTJX THE GREAT 

.1014-1035 




island restored the old Saxon line by electing for their king 
Edward the Confessor, son of Ethelred and of the Norman 
Emma. This reign was to result in a new Danish conquest, 
• — a conquest this time, however, by Danes wJio had become 
Frenchmen. Edward was more monk than king. Half Nor- 
man by birth, he had lived long at the Norman court, and he 



1 Or Witenagemote ; this was the meeting of the " wise " men, the National 
Assembly of great lords and ecclesiastics, which with the king ruled the land 
and promulgated laws, and which sometimes elected a king. 



§17] THE NEW BARBARIAN ATTACK. 21 

brouglit crowds of Norman favorites with hira to England. 
At his death the English Witan chose the hero Harold, the 
most powerful Saxon noble, for their king ; but William, Duke 
of Normandy, claimed the throne, — on the ground of a promise 
from Edward and of distant relationship, — and, aided by a 
new Danish invasion and by fatal jealousy between Danish 
England and Saxon England, he conquered the island in 1066, 
at the decisive battle of Hastings, or Senlac.-^ 

17. Significance of the Ninth Century Invasion. — The con- 
quests of England by Knut and by William the Conqueror 
have been told in the last section to save space, but plainly 
they do not resemble the invasions of the earlier period, with 
which we here are mainly concerned. In conclusion, it should 
be noted that the barbarian invasions of the ninth century, 
unlike those of the fifth, did not create a new society. When 
we look for their permanent results, beyond the misery they 
caused, we note (1) that they brought in some new Teutonic 
stock to invigorate northern France and eastern England ; 

(2) that they helped along the political union of England ; 

(3) that they hastened the breaking up of the Empire of 
Charlemagne ; and (4), chiefly, that they forced Europe to take 
on a new social and military organization for defense. This 
organization we call feudalism (§§ 18 ff.). 

For Further Reading, — On, the invasions in general, Duruy, Middle 
Ages, 156-170 ; Oman, Dark Ages, cli. xxiv ; or Bemont and Monod, 
229-240. On the invaders, see § 13, note. A longer treatment may be 
found in Keary's Tlie Vikings in Western Christendom or in Du Chaillu's 
Viking Age. A translation of the Norse Heimskringla should be accessi- 
ble ; or, if it is not, students should read the extracts given in the Old 
South Leaflets. On the Danes in England, advanced students may con- 
sult Green's Conquest of England or Freeman's Norman Conquest, I. 
For Alfred the Great, probably the most scholarly account is Plummer's 
Alfred the Great (1902) ; but students will enjoy the biographies by 
Hughes, Bowker, and Pauli. A biography by York -Powell is in prepara- 
tion (1903). The period of the Norman Conquest is treated in historical 

iThe Saxon institutions and the results of the Norman Conquest are 
treated in §§ 118-124. 



22 



A NEW SERIES OE DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



t§18 



fiction, from different points of view, in Kingsley's HerevMrd, Bulwer's 
Harold, and Tennyson's Harold (drama). 

Special Reports. — 1. Ruric and the Norse kingdom in Russia. 
2. The Varangians at Constantinople. C. The Norse in Ireland. 
4. Norse voyages to " Vinland the Good" in America. 5. Alfred 
the Great's life and work. 6. The Battle of Hastings. 



^■•■"fiji-j, 




Conway Castle. — From Old England. 



III. FEUDALISM. 

A. Origin : the Product op Anarchy. 

A protest of barbarism against barbarism. — Hegel. 

18. The Successor of the Empire of Charlemagne. — The nintli 

century, as we have noticed, saw the territorial beginnings of 
Germany, France, and Italy, and, outside the old realm of 
Charlemagne, of England, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, as 
well as of various small kingdoms in the valleys of the Rhine 
and Rhone. But the nations to occupy these territories were 
not yet made, and the new royal governments proved unequal 
to the needs of the age (§ 11). A few centuries later, the 
monarchies in some of these countries were to become the 
chief agents in making new nations ; meantime the church 



§19] 



ORIGIN OF FEUDALISM. 



23 



held Europe together in sentiment ; but everywhere, so far as 
maintaining order was concerned, the immediate successor of 
the Empire of Charlemagyie was the feudal organization. This 
new form of social and political government was to dominate 
Europe for four hundred years and to play a leading part in 
many countries up to the nineteenth century. Indeed, it has 
left important traces in the European institutions of to-day. 

19. The Dissolution of the Old Society and the Emergence of 
a New Order. — The rise of feudalism shows strikingly how 
strong the instinct in soci- 
ety is to set up some gov- 
ernment that will protect 
life and property. After 
Charlemagne, through the 
renewal of barbarian inva- 
sions from without and 
the collapse of government 
within, the ninth century 
became an age of inde- 
scribable horror and mis- 
ery. Thestrongrobbedthe 
weak; brigands swept over 
the land, to kill, torture, 
and plunder at will ; and 
society seemed on the point 
of universal dissolution. 
But out of this anarchy 
there emerged a neio social 
order resting on force. 
Here and there, and fin- 
ally in greater and greater 
numbers, some petty chief 
planted himself strongly 

on a small domain. Perhaps he had held it formerly as an 
officer of the king; perhaps he had seized it from another: in 
any case he kept it henceforth for himself, warding off all 




Medieval Castle of tjje larger sort, with 
moat and drawbridge. — From Gautier's 
La Chevalerie. 



24 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§19 



attack. By so doing he became a protector of others. The 
benefactor in that age was the man who could fight. " The 
noble, in the language of the day, is the man of war, the sol- 
dier (miles), and it is he who lays anew the foundation for 

modern society."^ His an- 
cestry was of little conse- 
quence : he was himself to 
be the ancestor of the later 
European aristocracy. "He 
is perhaps a Carolingian 
count, or a beneficiary of 
the king/or, in a few cases, 
the sturdy proprietor of a 
territory of his own. In 
one place he is a valiant 
abbot ; in others he is a 
converted pagan, a retired 
bandit, a rude huntsman. 
In any event, the noble is 
the powerful man, who, at 
the head of his troop, in- 
stead of fleeing or paying 
ransom, offers his breast, 
stands firm, and protects 
a patch of soil with his 
sword." " In those days," 
says an old chronicle, 
"kings, nobles, and knights, 
to be always ready, kept their horses in the rooms in which 
they slept with their wives." 

Finally, through the growth of this military generation, each 
district was provided with its settled body of soldiers and with 
its circle of frowning castles ; and then the invasions ceased. 

1 Taine, Ancient Regime, 6. Taine's fine passage, pp. 5-8, is largely quoted 
or adapted in this and the following section. 
- - 2 One who held lauds granted by the king. 




Imaginative Picture to show draw- 
bridge (with chains to raise and lower 
it) and part of portcullis. — From Gau- 
tier's La Chevalerie, 



§20] 



ORIGIN OF FEUDALISM. 



25 



20. Military Features : Castles and Mailed Horsemen. — Feu- 
dalism was primarily the product of military necessity ; and 
its whole nature was typified in two military features, the 
castle and the mailed horseman. Castles rose at every ford 
and above each mountain pass and on every hill commanding 
a fertile plain. They were enormous buildings of massive 
stone, crowned by frowning battlements whence boiling pitch 
and masses of rock could be hurled down upon assailants. 
Usually the single narrow approach was across a moat, by a 
drawbridge, to a heavy iron gate and a portcullis which could be 
dropped from above, while the bridge was protected by flanking 
towers, from whose narrow 
slit-like windows bowmen 
could command the road. 
Sometimes the walls in- 
closed several acres, with 
a variety of buildings and 
with room to gather cattle 
and supplies ; but in such 
cases there was always an 
inner "keep," or especially 
strong tower, with its own 
series of fortifications and, 
if possible, with its own 

well. Until the days of gunpowder, such strongholds were 
virtually impregnable to ordinary attack and could be captured 
only by surprise, by treachery, or by famine. Upon these walls 
the Norse invaders might spend their force in vain. In later 
times, secure of such retreat, a petty lord could sometimes defy 
even his own sovereign with impunity, and too often the castles 
became themselves the seats of robber-barons who oppressed 
the country around them. To-day their gray ruins all over 
Europe give a peculiar picturesqueness to the landscape, mock- 
ing, even in decay, the slighter structures of modern times.^ 

1 The walls were often enormously thick, so that a inan crawling out of a 
window would have to creep thrice his length. 




Guy's Tower, the "Keep" of Warwick 
Castle. — From Old England. 



26 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§21 



The castles afforded a refuge for man and treasure. But dur- 
ing the invasions, the problem in the field had been to bring to 
bay the swiftly moving assailants, — the light horsemen of the 
Hungarians, or the Danes with their swift boats for refuge. 
The Frankish infantry^ had proved altogether too slow. Feu- 
dalism met this need also. Each castle was always ready to 
pour forth its band of trained and faithful men-at-arms (horse- 
men in mail) under the command of the knight, either to gather 




Kenilworth Castle To-day. 

quickly with other bands into an army under a higher lord, or 
by themselves to cut off stragglers and hold the fords and 
passes. The raider's day was over; but meantime the old 
Teutonic foot-militia, in which every freeman had a place, had 
given way to an iron-clad cavalry, — the symbol and the resist- 
less weapon of the new feudal aristocracy. 

21. Feudal Classes and the Origin of Feudal Privileges. — 
While the disorders were at their worst, any man of courage 

1 The change to cavalry is sometimes ascribed to Martel before Tours 
{Ancient History, § 625) , and something was then attempted ; but the fighting 
force remained infantry among the East Franks (Germans) until after 900, 
and in " France " the horsemen were not important until some time after 
Charlemagne. 



§21] OEIGIN OF FEUDALISM. 27 

who could get together an armed force and fortify a dwelling, 
found the neighborhood ready to turn to him as its master. 
Other weaker landlords gladly surrendered to him their lands,^ 
to receive them back as "fiefs" (§ 26) ; while they themselves 
became his " vassals," acknowledging him as their " lord " and, 
at call, fighting under his banner. In return, the lord prom- 
ised these vassals protection in all just rights. The soldiery, 
so provided, afforded protection to other classes. The peas- 




Kenilworth Castle, as it appeared in 1620 ; after a fresco painting of that 
date. The walls of Kenilworth inclosed seven acres. 

ants saw that they were no longer to be slain or driven captive 
by chance marauders. They ventured to plow and sow, to 
raise crops and to rear children. In case of danger they found 
asylum in the circle of palisades at the foot of the castle. In 
return for this security they cultivated the lord's crop, acknowl- 
edged him as their landlord, and paid him dues for house, for 
cattle, and for each sale or inheritance.^ The village became 
his village ; the inhabitants became his villeins (" villains "). 

1 This practice was known as " commendation." 

2 This paragraph also is largely based upon Taine's graphic passage referred 
to above. 



28 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§21 



Besides these resident laborers, who had some claim to con- 
sideration, fugitive wretches gathered on the lord's lands, to 
receive such measure of mercy as he might choose to grant; 
and these sank into the class of " serfs," ^ of whom already 
there were many on all large estates. 

Both these last classes were largely at the lord's mercy, but 
they were necessarily gainers through their relation to him. 

One master, however ty- 
rannical, could not be so 
great an evil as exposure to 
constant anarchy. Hence 
there grewup peculiar priv- 
ileges of the lord, which in 
later times came to be un- 
speakably oppressive and 
obnoxious, but which in 
origin were usually con- 
nected with some benefit 
conferred by him. The 
lord's services did not stop 
with defense against robbers. He slew the wild beast, and so 
came finally to have the sole right to hunt, — with atrocious 
game laws to preserve animals, large and small, for his pleasure. 
He was also the sole organizer of labor : he built the mill, the 
oven, the ferry, the bridge, the highway, with the labor he 
protected : then he took toll for the use of all these conven- 
iences ; and later he demolished the mill that the villeins would 
have built for themselves. Moreover, he took the courts under 
his care, and rapidly assumed the power of a sovereign. His 
territory became a little state. The greater nobles coined money 
and made war and treaties, like very kings.^ As a rule, at 




Stoke Castle, a modest manor house of 
the thirteenth century ; styled a ' castle,' 
because of its entrance tower. — From 
Turner's Domestic Architecture. 



1 The terms "sei-f" and "villein" are explained in § M. Of course the 
above statement does not pretend to give the origin of agricultural villeinage : 
that institution goes back to Roman times. 

2 It is estimated that in France in the tenth century, out of some seventy 
thousand nobles, about two hundred exercised these sovereign powers. 



§22] 



ORIGIN OF FEUDALISM. 



29 



first when the lord did these things, it was best for his depend- 
ents that lie should do them. 

" Later the masters of these castles were the terror of the country, but 
they saved it first ; and though feudalism was to become so oppressive in 
the latter part of its existence, it had its time of legitimacy and useful- 
ness. Poioer always establishes itself through service and perishes through 
abuse.'''' — Dckut, Middle Ages, 201. 

" Disastrous as were most of the effects of the system, it at least justified 
its existence by saving Christendom from the foe without. . . . The price at 
which Christendom bought its safety was enormous : nevertheless no price 
was too high vyhen the future of Europe was at stake. Any ransom was 
worth paying, if thereby Rome was saved from the Saracen, Mainz from the 
Magyar, Paris from the heathen of the North." — Oman, Dai'k Ages, 512. 

22. Decentralization: Feudalism a Multitude of Separate Local 
Organizations. The Growth of Feudal Attachment. — Under the 
new organization, each 
locality was to a great de- 
gree independent of every 
other- district. The king 
had been expected to pro- 
tect and care for every 
corner of his realm, and 
as a fact he had protected 
none ; but each little chief- 
tain proved able to care for 
his own small corner when 
he was left to himself. The 
king lost authority and 
the nobles usurped it. In 
each country, feudalism 
meant the replacing one in- 
effective central authority by 
countless disconnected but 
effective local authorities. 

Politically this was an evil, but it answered its immediate 
purpose of military defense, and the evil, real though it was, 
had alleviations : gradually, within each feudal unit, habit and 




Interior of the Hall of Stoke Castle. 



30 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 23 

local patriotism bound together the different classes and made 
the fief, large or small, an object of love and devotion to its 
inhabitants. The lord was admired and almost worshiped by 
his people ; and in return, however harsh himself, he permitted 
no one else to injure or insult one of his dependents. A rough 
paternalism ruled in society. Perhaps the system was more 
rough than paternal ; but it was better than anarchy, and it 
nourished some virtues peculiar to its own day.-^ 

23. Economic Causes that assisted the Rise of Feudalism : Lack 
of Money and of Roads. — Economically, as well as politically, 
each locality had been thrown upon its own resources and had 
been compelled to provide for its own needs. Commerce had 
almost ceased, and there was little money. The rich man's 
wealth was in land ; but he could make land pay only by rent- 
ing it for service or for produce. He rented part of it to 
smaller '' nobles," who paid him by fighting for him, and part 
to workers, who raised and harvested his crops, and gave him 
part of their own : and of course the man who had no land was 
glad to exchange his services for the use of land in one way or 
the other. Moreover, the difficulty of communication between 
district and district tended to break up society into small units, 
each sufficient unto itself, economically as well as politically. 
These conditions, however, would not of themselves have made 
each of these properties a "state." They counted for less in 
producing the feudal system than did the political causes. 

24. Essential Elements of Feudalism ; the Preparation in Earlier 
History ; the Real Causes. — It is quite possible to trace back some of the 



1 A passage from Joinville's Memoir of St. Louis illustrates this better side 
of the feudal relation. Joinville was a great French noble about to set out ou 
a crusade ; at Eastertide he summoned his vassals to his castle for a week of 
feasting and dancing in honor of bis approaching departure. " And on the 
Friday I said to them : ' Sirs, I am going beyond sea and know not whether I 
shall ever return ; so draw near to me. If I have ever done you any wrong, 
I will redress it to one after another, as is my practice with all who have any- 
thing to ask of me.' And I made amends to them according to the decisions of 
those dwelling on my lands; and that I might not influence them, I withdrew 
from their deliberations and carried out without dispute whatever they decided." 



§25] FEUDALISM — SOCIAL CLASSES. 31 

elements of feudalism to earlier Roman and Teutonic history. Thus, serf- 
dom was undoubtedly connected with the Roman institution of coloni.i 
But serfdom was not an essential part of feudalism, and was not found 
long in some feudal countries. It is often said that the three essential 
elements of feudalism were (1) fealty, or the personal relation between 
lord and vassal, which took its peculiar form from the old Teutonic insti- 
tution of "companions" ;2 (2) the beneficium, or the piece of land granted 
by one man to another in return for service, a practice that had both 
Roman and Teutonic models ; and (3) jurisdiction, or the possession of 
governing power by the owner of a piece of land over all those dwelling 
on it, a connection of political authority with landholding which dates in 
some degree, perhaps, from the early Teutonic conquest,^ and which the 
Carolingian counts helped to develop* in the ninth century by seizing 
upon their governments for hereditary fiefs. Moreover, the feudal sys- 
tem grew through the practice of commendation^ (p. 27, n. 1), for which 
again both Roman and Teutonic history afforded precedents. 

These antecedents, however, were not the causes of feudal organiza- 
tion : they were materials out of which men built a new social structure 
when the old one had collapsed. No doubt they in some measure deter- 
mined the character of the structure, and they made its construction 
more rapid, when it had once begun ; but it began because of the ninth 
century conditions we have described. Feudalism was caused, on the 
political side, by the breakdown of all other authority, and on the eco- 
nomic side, by the absence of money and by the difficulty of communi- 
cation.^ 

B. Feudalism as a Completed Growth. 

25. Feudal Theory often opposed to Feudal Practice. — Feu- 
dalism lasted in its vigor over four hundred years, — almost as 
long a time as has elapsed since its decay. Thus it was one 
of the most enduring institutions that western civilization 
has known. Rising out of anarchy, it kept many anarchic 

1 Ancient History, § 549. 3 Ancient History, § 611. 

2 Ancient History, §§ 560, 561. ■* Ancient History, § 645. 

5 This practice became so general that nearly all pieces of land which had 
been held as freeholds were converted into fiefs. 

6 Such conditions have produced feudal systems in other times and in other 
lands, as in ancient Egypt and in modern Japan ; and no doubt in Europe they 
would have produced some kind of a feudal system, more slowly, without 
these earlier institutions just noted. 



32 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§26 

traits, and naturally it was one of the most complicated systems 
the world ever saw. Some writers, indeed, refuse to call it a 
system at all. At first the relations of the various classes 
differed widely in different localities, and each district fixed its 
own customs and law. To a great degree this remained true 
as long as feudalism lived at all ; but gradually the kings' 
lawyers built up a theory, of beautiful simplicity, to which 
facts in some measure came to conform. This theory helped 
to undermine feudal independence in favor of royal power, but 
it also preserved some feudal institutions for future times, 

26. Land Tenure and Social Classes. — In the feudal theory, 
the holder of any piece of land tvas only a tenant of some higher 
landlord; and, besides the clergy, there were two main classes 
of society, — the fighters, who were "noble," and the workers, 
who were ignoble. The king belonged to the fighting class and 
was the supreme landlord. He let out most of the land of the 
kingdom, on terms of military service, to great vassals. Each of 
these parceled out most of what he received, on like terms, to 
smaller vassals ; and so on, perhaps through six or seven steps, 
until the smallest division was reached that could support a mailed 
horseman for the nohW s life of fighting. Every such grant — a 
dukedom or a few acres — was a "fief"; and the grant carried 
also the power of government over those dwelling on the land. 

Each noble kept some of his land in his own hands, to live 
upon. The king and the great lords kept vast amounts, usually 
scattered in many pieces ; the smallest nobles necessarily kept 
all of theirs. This land was "domain" land. Every village 
and rising town was part of the domain of some noble, and 
every domain included at least one village of agricultural 
laborers. Part of a domain went to make holdings for the 
serfs and villeins, from which they might raise their own 
subsistence, and the rest was tilled by them for the lord 
directly, under the management of his bailiff.^ These workers 



1 The necessity of making use of the produce on the spot where it was 
raised, explains partly why kings and great lords in this age were always 



§26] FEUDALISM — SOCIAL CLASSES. 33 

had no power of government, but only the privilege of being 
governed. 

Thus the theory suggests a symmetrical hierarchy, which 
might be diagrammed on a blackboard. In practice there was 
no such regularity. Many of the smallest vassals held their land 
directly of the king or of the greatest lords, — not of a lord just 
above them in importance, — and the holdings and obligations 
differed in all conceivable ways. Often, great lords held part of 
their lands from smaller ones, and even kings were vassals 
for part of their kingdoms, — perhaps to vassals of their own. 
Thus the various grades were interlocked.^ There were many 
holders, even small ones, without a lord at all, until the con- 
venient maxim of the lawyers — "no land without a lord " — 
finally reduced them to tenants of the king, at least; and as 
the king had all he could do to look after his great vassals, 
the small ones were still left pretty much to themselves. 

Except for the smallest knights, all these landlords of the 
fighting class were " suzerains " ; and, except perhaps the king, 
all were vassals. There was no great social distinction between 
the lord and his vassals : vassal and lord lived commonly on 
terms of familiarity and mutual respect. The vassal was always 
a " noble," and his service was always " honorable." It included 
other matters than fighting (§§ 28-30), but it must never be 



moTing from one of their castles to another during the year. It was easier 
for the court to go to the produce than to hring the produce to the court. 

1 See Robinson's Western Europe, 113-115, for a striking illustration of 
such complexity. The Count of Champagne in the thirteenth century was 
lord of twenty-six castles, each the center of a separate fief. Most of these 
fiefs the count held of the French king, but for others of them he was vassal 
to the Duke of Burgundy, to the Archbishop of Rheims, to the Archbishop of 
Sens, to four neighboring bishops, and to the abbot of the monastery of St. 
Dennis. Says Dr. Robinson: "To all these persons the count had pledged 
himself to be faithful and true, and when his various lords fell out with one 
another, it must have been difficult to see where his duty lay." The count 
had divided his land among some two thousand knights : many of his vassals, 
however, held lands also of other lords, — in some cases of some of the liege 
lords of the count himself. The student will find it interesting to read Dr. 
Robinson's full statement, and to note his valuable map and diagram. 



34 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§27 

confounded with the " ignoble " service paid by serfs and vil- 
leins, upon whom rested this society of feudal fighters. 

In the ninth century, fiefs became hereditary. For three hundred years 
more, a man from the lower ranlss sometimes received a fief as a reward 
for his services, and so became a noble ; but in the twelfth century nobility 
became strictly hereditary. In order the more easily to secure the ser- 
vices due them, the lords objected to a vassal's dividing a fief among his 
sons : thus became established the practice of "primogeniture," or inherit- 
ance of landed property by the eldest son only. But on the continent all 
the sons of a noble kept their nobility, even if they were landless ; and 
(unless they entered the clergy) it became their aim to win lands, by 
serving some great lord who might have fiefs to bestow. 

In England, the term "noble" had a much narrower meaning: it ap- 
plied only to the greatest lords, and to their eldest sons after them. The 
whole ^'■gentry'''' class in England would have been nobles on the continent. 
(Cf. § 136.) 

27. The Feudal Contract. — In theory the relations between 
lord and vassal were regulated hy bargain, for mutual advantage. 
The receiving of a fief was accompanied by the solemn ceremony 
of homage. The future vassal, with head uncovered and sword 
ungirt, knelt before the lord, placing his folded hands between 
the lord's hands, and swore to be the lord's " man " ; ^ he took 
also an oath of fealty, and promised to perform many specific 
obligations. The lord raised the vassal from his knees, gave 
him the "kiss of peace," invested him with the fief, — usually 
by presenting him with a sword or a clod of earth as a sym- 
bol, — and promised to defend him in it.^ 

Very commonly the exact terms of the original contract were 
not preserved, and then the obligations had to be regulated by 
custom or by the decisions of other vassals in the lord's court 
(§ 29) or by appeal to the sword. Indeed, such quarrels were 
the chief cause of the incessant " private wars " of the period 
(§ 33). 

1 Latin, homo ; whence the term homage. 

2 For forms and contemporary accounts, see Pennsylvania Reprints, IV, 
No. 3. Some of the contracts were exceedingly fantastic. Perhaps the most 
remarkable one on record is given in Robinson's Western Surope, 110, note. 



§29] FEUDALISM — SOCIAL CLASSES. 35 

The most important duties of the vassals may be classed 
under three heads, — military service, court service, and pay- 
ment of financial aids (§§ 28-30). 

28. Military Service of the Vassal.^ — The vassal was to pre- 
sent himself, at the call of his lord, to serve in war. Perhaps 
he was to come alone or with a single squire, or perhaps he was 
to bring an army of knights and men-at-arms, — according to 
the size of his fief and the terms of his holding. For neighbor- 
hood service he might be required to call out even his serfs. 
He could be compelled to serve only a fixed time each year, — 
commonly forty days, — but for that time he was to maintain 
himself and his men. If he remained in the field longer, it 
was of his free consent, and the lord assumed the maintenance. 

The short term of service made the feudal army of little use 
for distant expeditions ; and indeed vassals were sometimes 
not under obligation to 
follow their lord out of 
the realm. The absence 
of general organization, 
too, and of all discipline 
except that of a lord over 
his immediate followers, 
made the feudal array an 
unwieldy and uncertain Dan^ ?^i^«> f represei. ted in an English manu- 
•' . script of the thirteenth century. — From 

instrument for offensive Lacroix, Moeurs, Usages, etc. 

warfare. 

29. Court Service of the Vassal. — The vassal was bound to 
serve also in the lord's " court," usually at three fixed periods 
each year. As judicial bodies, these courts gave judgment in 
legal disputes between vassals ; and as councils, they advised 
the lords in all important matters. A vassal, accused even by 
his lord, could be condemned only by this judgment of his 
peers (pares), or equals. The lord was only the presiding 
officer, not the judge. 

1 For contemporary descriptions and for forms of summons, see PennsyU 
vania Reprints, IV, No. 3, and Jones, Source Extracts, 74-85. 




36 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 30 

The second office of the court, however, was even more im- 
portant : the lord could not count upon support in any serious 
undertaking unless he had first secured the approval of his coun- 
cil: in feudal language, the council "advised and consented."^ 
Moreover, in deciding the force of local custom and in sanc- 
tioning new regulations, these bodies came nearer being legis- 
latures than did any other institution in that 
age. Thus the " feudal court " had a share 
in all three functions of government, — ad- 
ministrative, legislative, and judicial/ 

30. Financial Obligations of the Vassal. — 
The vassal was called upon also for financial 
assistance, but his contributions were made 
only upon special or unusual occasions, and 
were not looked upon as "taxes." Upon 
receiving a fief, either as a gift or as an in- 
heritance, he paid the lord a sum of money. ^ 
In theory this was a present, in exchange 
for the more valuable present from the lord : 
it was called a relief, and commonly it 
A Court Fool; after amounted to a year's revenue. If the vassal 
a medieval minia- . ■, -, .-, ■ ■, ■ n t- 

ture in brilliant Wished to sell or to give has fief to another, 

colors. Many great he was obliged to pay a ^?ie upon alienation. 

lords kept such __ , , ... 

jesters. Upon other occasions he made payments 

known as aids : the three most common pur- 
poses were to ransom the lord, if a prisoner, and to help meet 
the expense of knighting the lord's eldest son and of the 
marriage of his eldest daughter. Similar to such payments, 
but more oppressive, was the obligation to entertain the lord 
and all his folloiving upon a visit. 

1 This expression, through English practice, has come down into our con- 
Btitution : our President is empowered to do certain things " with the advice 
and consent" of the senate. 

2 These functions were not at all clearly distinguished until much later. 

8 The payment of this sum by the son of a deceased vassal was a recogni- 
tion of the fact that in theory the fief had been granted only for the life of the 
previous holder and that it had reverted to the higher lord. 




§32] FEUDALISM — SOCIAL CLASSES. 37 

These four — reliefs, alienation-fines, the various aids, and entertain- 
ment — cover the payuieuts made by an actual vassal in possession; but the 
lord had other claims upon the fief, which under certain circumstances 
might produce revenue. (1) He assumed the guardianship of a minor 
heir, and took to himself the revenues of the fief at such times, on the 
ground that there was no holder to render the service for which it had 
been granted. (2) He claimed the right to dispose of a female ward in 
marriage, — so as to secure for her a husband who should be a satisfactory 
vassal, — and then commonly he sold to the woman the right to marry 
without interference. Sometimes to extort a huge sum he presented 
a hateful suitor.i (3) In the absence of heirs, the fief returned (escheated) 
to the lord ; and (4) if the vassal's duties were not performed, it might 
come back to him by forfeiture. In general, however, all these latter 
rights — except the control over marriage — became so limited by custom 
that they were of little consequence. 

31. Obligations of the Lord. — By way of obligation toward 
a vassal, the lord was bound to defend liim against attack, to 
treat him justly, and to see that he obtained justice from the 
co-vassals. The lord could not withdraw a fief, so long as the 
vassal was true to his bargain; and the vassal could hold 
the lord to the performance of his duties, or at least could try 
to do so, by appealing to the court of the lord's lord. 

32. Extension of Feudal Tenure beyond Land ; the Church 
Feudalized. — Feudalism dominated all the relations of man 
with man; and other things than land were given and held 
as hereditary fiefs, — the great offices of the kingdom, the 
right to fish in a stream, or to cut wood in a forest. Even the 
church became feudalized. A monastery or a cathedral drew 
its revenues largely from its serfs and villeins and from the 
church lands cultivated by them ; and it provided for its de- 
fense by giving other lands to nobles on terms of military 
service. Thus bishops and abbots became suzerains, and they 
were also always vassals of some other lord. 

1 The Pennsylvania Reprints (IV, No. 3) contains extracts like the follow- 
ing from the English royal accounts : " Hawissa, who was wife to William Fitz- 
Roberts, renders 130 marks and 4 palfreys, that she may have peace from 
Peter of Borough, to whom the king has given permission to marry her, and 
that she may not he compelled to marry." 



38 A NEW SERIES OF DAUK AGES, 814-1100. [§33 

33. Violence of the Feudal Age. — Feudal theory paid elabo- 
rate regard to lights, but feudal practice was mainly a matter of 
force. There was no adequate machinery for obtaining jus- 
tice; it was not easy to enforce the decisions of the crude 
courts against any offender who might choose to resist; and 
the natural thing seemed to be for any one who felt himself 
injured to take the law into his own hands. The spirit of the 
times, too, regarded war as the most honorable and perhaps as 
the most religious way to settle disputes; and, for the slight- 
est causes, great or petty lords went to war with each other. 
These "private wars" became a chief evil of the age. They 
hindered the growth of industry, and commonly they hurt neu- 
tral parties quite as much as the actual participants. In the 
eleventh century the church, unable to stop such strife, tried 
to regulate it by proclaiming the "Truce of God," which forbade 
private war between Wednesday evening and the following 
Monday morning of each week and during the church festivals^; 
but it was long before this truce was generally observed. 

34. The Substratum of Workers.^ — The " upper classes " 
comprised the clergy and the nobles, — the "praying class" 
and the " fighting class." Tliese made uj) feudal society proper; 
but they were fed and clothed by an immensely larger number 
of workers. The workers, whether legally free or servile, did 
not count in politics and not much in war, and they are hardly 
referred to in the records of the time except as cattle might be 
mentioned. They had few rights and many duties. Labor 
was almost wholly agricultural, and was performed, mainly, 
by serfs and villeins. 

The serf was bound to the soil bylaw: he could not leave it, 
but neither could he be sold apart from it. He had his own 
bit of ground to cultivate, at such times as the lord's bailiff did 
not call him to labor on the lord's land. To be sure, he had to 

1 See Pennsylvania Reprints, I, No. 2, for such a proclamation, by the 
Archbishop of Cologne in 1083. 

2 Cf . § 36, note. The best short treatments are Emerton's Medieval Europe, 
509-520, and Adams' Growth of the French Nation, 64-68. 



§35] FEUDALISM— SOCIAL CLASSES. 39 

pay for the use of Ms land a large part of its produce, and he 
was compelled to pay a multitude of other dues and fines ; but 
if he succeeded in saving anything above a bare subsistence, it 
was usually left to him : so that there were some serfs with 
property,^ although in theory all that they had was their lord's. 
A step above the serf was the villein.^ The -villein was free 
iu person: he could leave his land and go from one lord to 
another, if he found it to his advantage to do so. As a matter 
of fact, such changes were not very common ; and in any case 
the villein must have some master, for the landless and master- 
less man vms an outlaw, at the mercy of any lord. Practically, 
the most important distinction between villein and serf was 
that the villein's land was subject only to fixed and certain 
charges, not to arbitrary exactions. These definite charges, 
however, were almost as oppressive as the uncertain charges 
upon the serf's land, because they were usually so fixed as to 
leave the villein only the bare necessities of life.^ 

35. The Better Side of Serfdom. — "We are too likely to think of the 
feudal age as one which degraded the laboring class from a higher stand- 
ard. This is not the whole truth. It is true, that, in the violence of the 



1 Somewhat as there were some slaves with property in our South, in the 
days of slavery. 

2 There were many grades of service and of rights, sometimes even on the 
same domain ; and serfdom and villeinage ran into each other in a most con- 
fusing manner, so that the two are often referred to under either name : but 
the broad distinction noted in the text is a convenient one to keep in mind. 
A difficult matter for the student to comprehend is, that the distinction 
applied primarily to land rather than to persons : some land was serf-land, 
and all who held it were serfs, or in danger of becoming serfs ; while other 
land was villein-land, and if a serf was given a piece of it he rose into the 
position of villein. 

3 Of. §§ 21-23. See also an excellent brief account in Emerton's Medieval 
Europe, 517-518, and a longer one in Cheyney's Industrial and Social History, 
3&-44. " The obligations of the villein toward his lord were either rents in 
kind, as provisions, grain, cattle, or poultry, products of the land and farm ; 
or labor or services of the body, the corvees in the fields and vineyards of the 
lord, the building of the castle or cleansing of the moat, the repair of roads, 
the making of furniture, utensils, horse-shoes, plowshares, carriages, etc." 
— BvnvXr Middle Ages, 210. 



40 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§36 



times, many men who had been free were thrust down into serfdom ; but 
all slaves soon rose into serfdom, and, on the whole, despite its miseries, 
that institution was a step onward from the slave organization of labor in 
ancient times toward the modern free organization. i Moreover, there were 
two special conditions which helped to make the position of the serfs toler- 
able, (1) Population was scanty, all through feudal times, and landlords 
felt the need of more laborers : therefore, to keep his servants from run- 
ning off to another lord, a wise master gave them good treatment, as ideas 
of good treatment went at that time. (2) Custom made law ; and if a 
master allowed a serf to pay the same service, and no other, year after 
year, finally he lost the right to call for other service, and the serf had 
insensibly become a villein, with service fixed by custom. In this and 
other ways, in many parts of Europe, the serfs rose out of serfdom during 
the later part of the Middle Ages. 

36. Life in the Village.^ — To picture even roughly tlie life of 
the non-noble classes is not easy. There were few towns 

until the twelfth century, 
and, aside from the re- 
tainers of the nobles in the 
castles, most of the popula- 
tion dwelt in agricultural 
villages. The farmhouses 
were not scattered, each in 
its own field: they were 
grouped in villages of 
twenty or fifty dwellings. 
Each village had its church 
and usually its manor 
house. The latter might 
be a castle, or it might be 
little better than the homes of the peasants and be used only by 
the lord's steward. The other dwellings — low, filthy, thatch 




Ancient Manor House, Melichope, Eng- 
land ; in its present condition. — From 
Wright's Homes of Other Days. 



1 Ancient History, § 549. 

2 The most grai^hic treatments of peasant life are in Jessopp's Friars, 87- 
112 ; Jeuks' Edward Plantagenet, 46-52; and in Cheyney's Industrial and 
Social History, 31-52. Of the last, read especially 31-40 and 50-52. There is 
also a good treatment in Ashley's Economic History, I, 10^3. Special report : 
a comparison of a medieval village in Western Europe with a Russian " Mir " 



§36] 



FEUDALISM — VILLAGE LIFE. 



41 




or sod-roofed, one-room hovels, without chimney or window — 
straggled along either side of an irregular lane, where poultry 
and children played in the dirt. Attached to each house was 
its patch of vegetable garden, and its 
low stable and barn, — these last often 
under the same roof as the living- 
room. Each village had its smithy, 
and somewhere near, on a convenient 
stream, was the lord's mill. About 
the village lay its tracts of land, reach- 
ing away until bounded by the lands 
of other villages or by the waste. ^ 

A rude rotation of crops was prac- 
tised. The plowland was divided into 
three great "fields": one of these 
was sown to wheat (in the fall), one 
to barley (in the spring), while the 
other lay fallow to recuperate. Each 
field was divided into a great number 
of narrow strips, each as nearly as possible a "furrow-long," 
and one, two, or four rods wide ; so that each contained from 
a quarter of an acre to an acre. Usually the strips were sepa- 
rated by " balks," or ridges of turf. A peasant's holding was 
about thirty acres, ten acres in each " field " ; and his share in 
each lay not in one piece, but in fifteen or thirty scattered 
strips. The lord's land, probably half the whole, lay in strips 
like the rest, and was managed by his steward. 

Of course this kind of holding compelled a common cultiva- 
tion : each man must sow what his neighbor sowed ; and as a 
rule, each could sow, till, and harvest only when his neighbors 
did. Agriculture was extremely crude. Only six or eight 
bushels of wheat or rye were expected from an acre. Walter 



Interior View of the 
Upper Wineow Shown 
IN Melichope Manor 
House. This view shows 
the depth of the wall, — 
into which, indeed, the 
stairway is cut. 



(village) of to-day, as described in Wallace's Russia, or in Leroy-Beaulieu's 
Tsars and Russians. 

1 Cf. Gibbins' Industrial History of England, 21, for a suggestive diagram 
of such a village and its lands. 



42 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§36 



of Henley, a thirteenth century writer on agriculture, says that 
threefold the seed was an average harvest, and that often a 
man was lucky to get back his seed corn and as much again. 
The breed of all farm animals was small. The plow re- 
quired eight oxen. Carts were few and cumbrous. The dis- 
tance to the outlying parts of the fields added to the labor of 
the villagers. There was little or no cultivation of root foods : 




One of the Open Fields of the Manor of Lower Heyford, Oxford- 
shire. This manor now belongs to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. — From 
Andrews' History of England. 



potatoes, of course, were unknown ; sometimes a few turnips 
and cabbages and carrots, rather uneatable varieties probably, 
were grown in garden plots behind the houses. In the " fields," 
wheat and rye were raised as breadstuffs, barley for the brew- 
ing of beer, and sometimes peas and beans, commonly for 
fodder. 

The most important crop was the wild hay, upon which the 
cattle had to be fed during the winter. Meadowland was 



§36] FEUDALISM — VILLAGE LIFE. 43 

twice as valuable as plowland. The meadow was fenced for 
the hay harvest, but was afterward thrown open for pasture ; 
and usually there was other extensive pasture and wood land, 
where lord and villagers fattened their cattle and swine. It 
was difficult to carry enough animals through the winter for 
the necessary farm work and breeding ; those to be used for 
food were killed in the fall and salted down. The large use of 
salt meat (the only meat for half the year) and the little vari- 
ety in food were in part the causes of loathsome diseases among 




A Reaper's Cart going Uphill. — After Jusserand's English Wayfaring 
Life ; from a fourteenth century manuscript. Note the force of men and 
horses necessary. The steepness of the hill is, of course, exaggerated, so as 
to fit the picture to the space in the manuscript. 

the people. The chief luxury of the poor was honey ; and well- 
to-do peasants often had a hive of bees in their garden plot. 

Each village was a world by itself. Several villages might 
belong to one lord, but they had little more intercourse with 
each other on that account. The lord's bailiff secured from 
some distant market the three outside products needed, — 
salt, millstones, and iron for the plowshares and for other 
tools. Except for this, a village carried on its primitive sys- 
tem of industry in complete isolation, — unless a war desolated 
it, or a royal procession chanced to pass through it. Com- 
monly in the ninth century it had not even a shop. The 
women of each household wove rough cloth for the single 



44 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§37 

garment that covered them ; and the men prepared leather for 
their own heavier clothing. 

This shut-in life was unwholesome and stupefying and 
morally degrading. Measured by our standards, it was often 
indescribably ferocious, indecent, and cheerless. Certainly it 
was worse than anything the worst slums of our modern cities 
can show ; but probably it was a great step up from the aver- 
age condition of the laboring (slave) population of earlier ages. 

37. Life in the Castle : Chivalry.^ — Many stories give us some 
picture of the life of the noble classes. We know that they 
dwelt in gloomy fortresses over dark dungeons where prisoners 
rotted, and that they had fighting for business, and hunting 
with hound and hawk and playing at fighting for pleasures. We 
can see the ladies busied over tapestries and embroideries, in 
the chambers; gay pages flit through the halls, or play at 
chess in the deep windows ; and in the courtyard lounge gruff 
men-at-arms, ready with blind obedience to follow the lord of 
the castle on any foray or even in an attack upon their king. 

This grim life had its romantic and gentle side, indicated to 
us by the name chivalry. The term at first meant the nobles 
on horseback (from the French cheval, horse), but it came to 
stand for the whole institution of " knighthood," with all its 
ideals. Chivalry has been called the "flower of feudalism." 
It did not reach formal development until the twelfth century, 
but it can best be treated here. 

Each feudal lord of consequence was surrounded by a social 
court (not to be confused with the legal " court," or council, 
§ 29), where his leading vassals often attended. In this court, 
as in a school, the sons of his vassals were brought up and 
trained, under the lord's eye, in all the duties of a fearless and 
blameless knight. This education had two stages. Until about 
fourteen the boy was known as Bipage; and, aside from the train- 

1 Good treatments are given in Henderson's Short History of Germany, I, 
112-121, or in Stille's Studies, 346-352. Longer accounts may be found in 
Cutts' Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ac/es, 311-460, and in the histories 
of Chivalry by James, Mills, and Cornish. 



§37] FEUDALISM— CHIVALRY. 45 

ing in the use of light arms, his attendance was paid mainly 
to the mistress of the castle, by whom he was taught obedience 
and courtesy and a knight's duty to religion and to the ladies. 
Later, the page became a squire to the lord, serving about his 
person, arming him for the field, and accompanying him to 
battle, with special care for his safety. 



Falconry. — From a medieval manuscript reproduced in Lacroix, Moeurs, 

Usages, etc. 

After five or six years of such service, the squire was ready 
to become a knight. Admission to this order was a matter of 
imposing and symbolic ceremonial. The youth fasted and con- 
fessed his sins, and then spent a night in the chapel in prayer 
and vigil over his arms. The next day, after listening to a 
sermon upon the duties of knighthood, he appeared before his 
lord, and, kneeling, took the vows to be a brave and gentle 
knight, to defend the church, to protect the ladies, to be faith- 
ful to his fellows, and to succor the distressed, especially 
widows and orphans. The ladies of the castle then buckled 



46 



A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§37 



on the golden spurs, and the lord struck him lightly over the 
shoulder with the flat of his sword, pronouncing a formula, 
such as " In the name of God, of St. Michael, and of St. George, 
I make you knight." 

Thus chivalry was the result of the church's trying to take 
possession of feudal society : it was an imperfect attempt to 

fuse the ideals of the Teutonic war- 
rior and of the Christian. Its faults 
were twofold. (1) It was exclusive : 
its spirit was altogether a class 
spirit; it recognized no obligations 
except to nobles ; even the vow to 
protect women did not apply to any 
women but those of gentle birth. 
(2) It carried some of its virtues 
(bravery and devotion to ladies) to 
such extremes as to make them 
fantastic, if not vicious. The ideals, 
too, were not always reached; and 
a perfect knight may have been 
no more common than is a perfect 
gentleman to-day. But chivalry did 
help to soften manners and to hu- 
manize society. Along with other 
feudal institutions, it developed a 
high sense of personal honor and of 
personal independence, and, at the 
same time, of personal loyalty to a 
lord ; it elevated women ; and it had much to do with creating 
the modern home and our ideal of a gentleman.^ 




Knight in Armor, visor 
up. — From Lacroix, Vie 
Militaire. 



1 Toward the year 1400, when chivalry was decaying, Chaucer gives this 
picture of his typical knight : — 

•' A knight there was, and that a worthy man, 
That fro the time that he first hegan 
To riden out, he loved chivalry, 
Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy. . . . 



§38] 



FEUDALISM— CHIVALRY. 



47 



38. The Men of Religion in the Feudal Age. — The two con- 
tradictory ideals of the feudal age were those of the knight 
and of the monk. The village priest was a peasant in origin, 
and usually remained es- 
sentially a peasant in his 
life, marrying in the vil- 
lage (until the eleventh 
century) and oftentimes 
working in the fields with 
his neighbors. He was a 
peasant with a somewhat 
better income than his fel- 
lows, with a little learning 
and a revered position, and 
with great power for good.^ 
In corresponding manner, 
the great ecclesiastics — 




Monks Busy in Field Labor. — From 
Lacroix, after a thirteenth century- 
French manuscript. 



bishops and archbishops — were essentially of the noble class, 
both in origin and in manner of life, fitting in all respects 
into the feudal framework. But the monks ^ were a distinct 

And tho that he was worthy, he was wise, 
And of his port as meek as is a maid. 
And never yet no villainy he said 
In all his life, unto no manner wight. 
He was a very perfect, gentle knight." 

About seventy years later, in Malory's King Arthur, another beautiful 
ideal is pictured. When Sir Ector found Sir Lancelot dead, — " He fell down 
in a swoon . . . and when he waked it were hard for any tongue to tell the 
dolefull complaints that he made. ' All, Lancelot,' he said, . . . ' thou wert 
the courteoust knight that ever bore shield ; and thou wert the truest friend 
to thy lover that ever bestrode horse ; and thou wert the truest lover among 
sinful men that ever loved woman ; and thou wert the kindest man that ever 
Struck with sword ; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among 
the press of knights ; and thou wert the meekest man and the gentlest that 
ever ate in hall among ladies ; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mor- 
tel foe that ever put spear in rest.' " 

1 Cf. § 72 for a fuller statement regarding the non-monastic clergy. The 
best treatment of the priest is Cutts' Parish Priests and their People. 

2 Monasteries are treated briefly in the Ancient History, §§ 602-605. For 
monastic life, cf. Jessop's Coming of the Friars, ch. iii. 



48 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 39 

class. They sought to escape the anarchy and the violence of 
the world about them, and in their quiet retreat they lived 
religious lives of industry and prayer. To other men in those 
evil days, their temperance, abstinence, and self-sacrifice seemed 
more than human ; and their saintly reputation long defended 
them, even when corruption for a time had crept in among them. 
For centuries they deserved this reverence. The thousands of 
monasteries that dotted Europe were the chief centers of in- 
dustry, peace, and religion, and the sole refuge of learning.^ 
From them came most of the great religious revivals of the 
Middle Ages.^ 

39- Cautions for the Student. — To avoid common misconceptions 
regarding feudalism, it is well to fix in mind ttie following points : — 

(1) The kings kept their old authority in theory, and therefore were 

always something more than great feudal lords, though the dif- 
ference was vague. 

(2) "Vassal" never means serf: a vassal was free and noble, though 

he was, by bargain, the "man" of some "lord." 

(3) Strictly speaking, feudal society contained only suzerains and vas- 

sals, though these classes made up but a small part of the popu- 
■ lation. 

(4) Serfs and villeins were not part of the feudal system : that is, their 

relations to their masters were not feudal relations, In strict 
language. But some such classes were necessary to the existence 
of the feudal classes above them. 

(5) Feudalism did not create serfs, to begin with, but it did thrust 

down into the position of serfs and villeins many men who had 
formerly been free. 

(6) In feudal times, society was always more complex and less sym- 

metrical than would seem from any single account. 

40- Extracts from Joinville's Memoir of St. Louis, to show the Moral 
Ideas of the Best Lay Society about 1300. 

[The book was dedicated to the son of the ruling king, a great grand- 
son of St. Louis.] "And because I see no one who ought to have it 

1 Special report : the monasteries and learning (see especially Putnam's 
Books and their Makers in the Middle Ages, ch. i.). Munro's Middle Ages, 
127, gives a map of monasteries in France, which the student should see. 

2 Cf. §§ 59, &}, 72 close, and footnote 2. 



§40] FEUDALISM— CHIV ALE Y. " 49 

so rightly as you who are his heir, I send it to you, that you and your 
brothers and others who may hear it read, may take good example from 
it and put these examples in practice, that God may be pleased with you. 
. . . The memory of the great king is a great honor to all his lineage 
who would resemble him in doing good and who seek to imitate him, but 
great dishonor to those of his blood who elect to do evil ; for the people 
will point the finger at them and say that the sainted king from whom 
they are descended would never have consented to such evil actions. 
. . . The saint [Louis was canonized about thirty years after his death] 
loved truth to such a degree that even with the Saracens he would not 
draw back from what he had promised. As to his palate he was so indif- 
ferent that never did I hear him ask for any particular dish, as many men 
do, but he ate contentedly of whatever was served up to him. He was 
measured in his speech. Never in my life did I hear him speak ill of any 
one ; nor did I ever hear him name the Devil, — a name widely spread in 
this realm ; and it is a great disgrace to the kingdom of Trance, and to the 
king when he suffers it, that one can hardly speak without saying ' the 
Devil take it ' and it is a great sin to devote to the Devil a man given to 
God from the moment that he is baptized. In the Joinville household, 
whoso utters such a word receives a box on the ears or a slap on the 
mouth, and bad language is almost wholly suppressed. ... He asked me 
once whether I wished to be honored and enter Paradise through death ? 
Keep yourself then from doing or saying aught which, if all the world 
knew, you could not avow and say, 'I did this,' 'I said that.' He told 
me to refrain from contradicting anything said in my presence, providing 
there was no sin in remaining silent, because hard words engender strife. 
... He used to say that a man should so equip his person that the 
grey-beards of the day should not be able to say that it was over done ; 
nor the young men that there was anything wanting. After the king's 
return from over the sea, he lived so devoutly that he never wore furs of 
different colors, or scarlet cloth, or gilt stirups or spurs. I was reminded 
of this by the father of the king who now reigns [Philip the Hardy] allud- 
ing once to the embroidered coats of arms fashionable now-a-days. I 
made answer to him that never in the voyage over the sea did I see em- 
broidered coats . . . and that he would have done better to have given 
the money to the poor and to have worn plain clothes as his father used 
to do." 

[Joinville gives also this extract from Louis' deathbed testament to his 
son.] " Fair son, the first thing that I teach thee is to mould thy heart to 
love God. If God send thee adversity, accept it patiently, and render 
thanks, and know that thou hast deserved it. If he send thee prosperity, 
thank him humbly, that thou be not worse through pride. Bear thyself 



50 A NEW SEEIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§40 

so that thy confessor and friends may venture to reprove thee for thy 
misdeeds. Attend devoutly to the service of Holy Church both with 
mouth and mind. Let thy heart be gentle and compassionate toward the 
poor and the afflicted, and comfort them so far as in thee lies. Help the 
right and uphold the poor man until the truth be made manifest [i.e. 
while the case is undecided]. Bestow the benefices of the church upon 
men of unspotted lives. Wage no war with any Christian prince, except 
it be necessary after grave deliberation. Be careful to have good provosts 
and bailiffs, and make frequent inquiries about them, and about all thy 
servants as to how they conduct themselves, and whether they are guilty 
of overmuch greed and deceit. . . . Fair dear son, I bestow upon thee all 
the benediction a good father can give a good son. And may the blessed 
Trinity preserve and defend thee from all evil, and give thee grace to do 
the will of God." 

For Further Reading. — Excellent "source" material will be found 
in Pennsylvania Beprints, IV, No. ,S, and in Jones' Source Extracts, both 
of which have been referred to in the notes. These volumes should be 
used exhaustively for feudalism. The student should also know Froissart 
(fourteenth century), — at least in Lanier's charming volume. The Boys'' 
Froissart, — and Joinville's Memoir of St. Louis (thirteenth century). 
For modern accounts, the best statements are those in Adams' Civiliza^ 
tion and his Growth of the French Nation, and in Emerton's Medieval 
Europe. Advanced students will find an admirable treatment in Seignobos' 
Feudal Begime. There is a vast literature on the subject of feudalism ; 
but the older accounts, such as those of Hallam, Robertson, and Guizot, 
are more or less untrustworthy, especially regarding the rise of the insti- 
tution. For special features, — chivalry, village life, etc., — see footnote 
references to §§ 21, 36-38. Historical fiction upon the feudal period is 
particularly valuable : Scott's novels, of course, must not be overlooked, 
although they give a false glamor to the age, and perhaps they should be 
corrected by "Mark Twain's" scathing treatment in his Connecticut 
Yankee in King Arthur'' s Court. Other excellent portraits are given in 
Robert Louis Stevenson's Black Arrow and Conan Doyle's miite Com- 
pany. Charlotte Yonge's Little Duke and Stockton's Story of Viteau 
are good for younger students and will be enjoyed by older ones. 
Martineau's Prince and Peasant pictures the abuses of feudalism at a 
later period. 

Special Reports. — 1. The revolt of the Norman peasants in 997, and 
the way it was regarded by feudal society. (See a medieval account in 
Jones' Source Extracts, 87-88. This may well be made a class exercise 
instead of an individual topic.) 2. Tournaments. 3. The amuse* 










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§41] TRANCE — RISE OP A NATIVE DYNASTY. 61 

ment of hunting in feudal times. 4. Life in a feudal castle. 5. Her- 
aldry. 6. Armor. 7. Life in a monastery. 

For the second, third, and fourth topics, material should be sought in 
the better historical novels dealing with the period. Students may also 
be called upon to find incidents in such literature illustrating the various 
paragraphs in the preceding treatment. Eor topic 7, see especially 
Jessopp's Coming of the Friars. 

Suggestions for Retikw upon Divisions I-III. 

1. Let the class prepare review questions, each member five or ten. 

Criticise the questions, showing which ones help to bring out im- 
portant facts and contrasts and likenesses, and which are merely 
trivial and curious. 

2. Make lists of important names or terms for rapid drill, requiring brief 

but clear explanation of each term. The following terms are suitable: 
suzerain (liege), vassal, serf, villein, Lotharingia, Bomance lan- 
guage, Oath of Strashurg, Magyars, Bolf the Dane, feudal aids. 
This number may be increased threefold. Let the class preserve 
such lists for future reviews. 



IV. FRANCE FROM VERDUN TO THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 

A. EiSE OF A Native Dynastt. 

41. The Last Carolingians and the Dukes of France. — By the Treaty 
of Verdun (§ 8), Charles the Bald, a grandson of Charlemagne, became 
King of the West Franks (843-877). His reign — the longest of any of his 
race after Charlemagne — was concerned only with wars against his 
brothers, nephews, and grand-nephews, in the kingdoms about him, and 
with the ravages of the Norse pirates. Three feeble successors ^ held the 
throne for seven disastrous years. Then the nobles of France passed over 
the only survivor of this branch of the Carolingians, a boy of five years, 
to be known later as Charles the Simple, ^ and offered the crown to Charles 
the Fat, of the German branch. By the death of all competitors, Charles 
had already become Emperor and ruler of Germany and of most of the old 
Middle Kingdom ; and so now for a moment nearly all of the Empire of 
Charlemagne was reunited. Charles, however, was a sluggish coward, in- 
capable of decision or action, on account of disease and corpulence. In 887, 

1 Louis the Stammerer (877-879) and his two sons, joint rulers, Louis III 
(879-882) and Carlman (879-884) . 

2 A third son of Louis the Stammerer. 



52 A NEW SERIES OP DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 41 

he was deposed by a general revolt, and the dominions of the Carolingians 
fell apart upon the old lines of the Division of Verdun. France was 
never again to be joined to the Empire. 

Then for a hundred years (887-987), the crown passed back and forth 
between the Carolingians and a new family who were finally to establish 
themselves firmly upon the throne.^ In the universal despair of the pre- 
ceding fifty years, the only successful leadership in the north of France 
against the Norse inroads had come from a hero of humble birth who be- 
came known as Robert the Strong."^ Robertsaved Paris from destruction, 
and extended his lands until they reached from the Seine to Orleans on 
the banks of the Loire. Somewhat later, this territory was known as the 
Dukedom of Francia. After Robert's death in battle against the Norse- 
men, his son Odo continued his policy. Odo became the most powerful 
nobleman in France, and was practically an independent sovereign. 

By this time there had grown up similar great lordships all over the 
kingdom, — Flanders, Brittany, Poitou, Anjou, Gascony, Aquitaine, 
Toulouse, Burgundy, Champagne, Blois, — each ruled by its hereditary 
count or duke. On the deposition of Charles the Fat, the great nobles 
chose Odo king. Odo was the first French^ king of France. His reign 
went to struggles with jealous rivals and to beating off the Northmen. 
At his death he named as his successor Charles the Simple (§ 41), the 
heir of the Carolingians. After more changes back and forth, the direct 
Carolingian line ran out (987), and Hugh Capet,* a grand-nephew of Odo, 
was chosen king by a council of nobles and clergy. 

1 The alternations were as follows : — 

Old line : Charles the Fat, 884-887 ; deposed. 

New line : Odo, 887-898. 

Old line : Charles the Simple, 898-922 ; died in prison, 929. 

New line : Robert, 922-923 ; (Rudolph of Burgundy, 923-936). 

Old line : Louis IV, 936-954 ; Lothair, 954-986 ; Louis V, 986-987. 

New line : Hugh Capet, elected in 987. 

2 According to one story, he was descended from a Parisian butcher; a 
more probable account makes him a descendant of one of the Saxons whom 
Charlemagne had removed from their homes to the heart of Gaul. 

8 The Carolingians had been Germans {Ancient History, § 636, note). The 
line ruling in Gaul had, however, become partly French, and perhaps the 
chief importance in the change of dynasty lay in getting rid, in France, of 
the Carolingian imperial tradition. 

4 Hugh's surname came from his custom of wearing an abbot's cope, oi 
cape: he was a " lay abbot." 



§42] FRANCE— THE FIRST CAPETIANS. 53 

B. Conditions confronting the Early Capetians 

42. The ''Feudal Kingship" of the First Capetians.^ — Hugh 
Capet was crowned, not as " King of France," but as " King 
of the Gauls, Bretons, Danes, ISTormans, Aquitanians, Goths, 
Spaniards, and Gascons," This title shows something of the 
composite nature, at that date, of the realm we call France. 
In later times, French kingship was to become the type of 
absolute and centralized government (§ 264), and it is this kind 
of kingship that comes naturally before our minds when 
we speak of even the early French kings; so it is hard 
for us to get a clear idea of the difficulties before the first 
Capetians. The election of Hugh did not increase his actual 
power. It did increase his duties and his claims to power; 
but his resources for performing those duties and enforcing 
those claims rested almost solely at first on his old possessions 
as Duke of Francia. Several of the great princes ruling over 
the rest of France were each quite as powerful as the king. 
Hugh was now in theory their sovereign : but so far as they 
obeyed him at all, they obeyed him not as sovereign, but as 
suzerain ; and this tie between the great vassals and the feudal 
king was precisely the least real of all the links in the whole 
chain of lords and vassals. France had no national machin- 
ery for government. In particular, there were three wants. 

a. There was no system of French law, and there were no 
national courts. Each great fief was building up its own local 
law from its own customs; and the king's ''court" was little 
more than a court for his vassals only, just as each vassal had 
a court for his own subjects (§ 29). 

6. There was no national revenue, no general system of taxa- 
tion. The king's income came from his own domain land 
(§ 26) and from the irregular feudal aids (§ 30). 

c. There was no national militia. When the king needed 
an army, his forces came (1) from his own immediate feudal 

1 Read the admirable treatment in Adams' Growth of the Fi-ench Nation, 
55-59, from which this and the two following sections are condensed. 



54 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§43 

followers in his hereditary duchy, and (2) from such of his 
great vassals elsewhere as friendship might bring to his aid. 
Not till much later was the king able to compel the attendance 
of these princes : at first he was obliged to accept any excuse 
for staying away that they deigned to make.-^ 

43. The "Work before the Capetian Kings and Some Elements 
of Their Success. — The proper task for the Capetian kings was 
to make, from these composite, decentralized feudal fragments 
of a kingdom, a new French nation with a common language, 
common customs, and common patriotism. This work, after 
some centuries of constant effort, they were to accomplish. 
The chief forces and conditions that made for their success 
may be classed under four heads : — 

a. TJie hereditary possessions, or private fortunes, of the dukes 
of Francia (§ 41). 

h. The support of the church. That organization felt the 
need of a strong king to protect both itself and society at 
large against the violence of the greedy nobles; and in that 
age, when bishops and abbots were themselves feudal lords, 
the church could give not only moral support, but also impor- 
tant material aid. 

c. The Roman idea of government. The Capetians refused 
to accept the theory of a merely feudal kingship : they used 
that theory when it suited their purposes, but, from the first, 
with elastic policy, they claimed also the rights of a centralized 
monarchy. This theory was based upon Roman ideas,^ and it 
found ready support from the lawyers, when that class rose to 
importance in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 

d. The undisputed succession to the throne for many genera- 
tions. The Capetians were to rule France for more than eight 
hundred years, or as long as France was to have kings at all. 
For a century the crown had been elective in practice, and no 

1 In all these respects, however, the Capetians were better off than the 
Carolingians had been, since the latter had had almost no feudal resources of 
their own. 

2 Ancient History, § 613. 



§45] GERMANY — CLOSE OF CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. 55 

doubt the Teutonic theory of an elective kingship had always 
survived. In Germany, election was soon to become the 
regular practice ; but the election of Hugh Capet was the 
last such incident in French history. For three centuries each 
king left a son old enough, or nearly old enough, to assume the 
government ; and in the absence of contending claims, the 
succession became strictly hereditary. The long line of able 
rulers held resolutely to one royal policy, and so the unbroken 
succession itself became a factor in their final victory. 

44. The Early Reigns, to the Twelfth Century.^ — The Capetian suc- 
cess, however, did not begin in earnest in the period treated in this 
chapter. The first three kings of the new dynasty, surrounded with 
difficulties as they were, hardly held their own. The fourth king, 
Philip I, ruled nearly fifty years, and prepared for the later advance by 
increasing the private domain of his house. In the early part of his reign 
occurred the conquest of England (§ 16) by the Duke of Normandy, a 
vassal of the French king ; and in the latter part, the crusades began 
(§§ 92 ff.). These events were both to have a mighty influence upon the 
development of the French monarchy, but their results were not to show 
until a later period, when the consolidation of France had already made 
some progress (§§ 150-152). 

V. GERMANY FROM VERDUN TO THE RESTORATION OF 
THE EMPIRE, 843-962.2 

A. Germany at the Close of the Carolingian Period. 

45. The Great ''Stem Duchies." — With the break-up of the 
Carolingian state, the Germans, more plainly than before, 
appear divided into four great " stems," — Saxons, Franks, 
Suabians (Alemanni), and Bavarians.^ Besides these the 
Lotharingians must be counted as a fifth German people, 

1 The reigns for this preliminary period were as follows : Hugh, 987-996 ; 
Robert, 996-1031 ; Henry I, 1031-1060 ; Philip 1, 1060-1108. For earlier reigns, 
see §§ 6, 7, 41, note ; for later reigns, see table, § 148. 

2 For the remaining century and a half of the period treated in Part I, 
Germany is a part of the Holy Roman Empire ; see Divisions VI, VII, and 
VIII. 

8 Cf. map, facing page 63. Advanced students will find an excellent treat- 
ment of the " stems " in Fisher's Medieval Empire, I, 48-93. 



56 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 46 

thotigh that duchy was for a while connected with the realm 
of France. Each of the five divisions rallied around a native 
duke, and, at times, seemed likely to become a distinct nation. 
The two most important stems were the German Franks 
(Franconians) and the Saxons. Since the time of Clovis, the 
Franks had been the dominant people ; but now the more 
vigorous Saxons were to gain the leadership. Of all the Ger- 
man races the Saxons were the least touched by Roman cul- 
ture and -Eoman ideas. The old paganism still lingered 
among the wild moors of their northern frontiers, and as a 
people they kept many primitive Teutonic customs. 

46. The Proper Work of the German Kings, and some Hin- 
drances to Success. — For many years after the Carolingians, 
Germany was to be a federation of great duchies, the duke of 
the strongest nation ranking over the others as king. The two 
proper tasks for the king were to unite these five German peo- 
ples and to beat off the heathen invaders. 

Iji marked contrast with the Capetian line in France, the 
German royal families were all to die out after two or three 
generations ; so that Germany, frequently compelled to choose 
a new line of rulers, preserved the old principle of election, 
which was so soon to disappear in France. This condition 
weakened the monarchy at critical periods. Moreover, a strong 
ruler was always tempted to try to secure also the fragments 
of the old Middle Kingdom and of Italy, on the west and south, 
and to revive the imperial dignity of Charlemagne. In these 
attempts, German kings were to dissipate energy needed for 
Germany itself. 

B. EisE OF Native Dynasties : ^ Historical Outline to 962. 

47. The Change from Carolingian to Native Rulers : Conrad the 
Franconian. — On the deposition of Charles the Fat (§ 41), 
Armdf, a German Carolingian, secured the throne ; but in 911 

1 The Carolingian rulers of Germany from Verdun to the election of a 
new line were as follows : Lewis II (Lewis the German) , 843-876 ; Lewis III 



§48] GERMANY — RISE OF NATIVE DYNASTIES. 57 

his Hue died out with his son, Lewis the Child. The German 
nobles then had at least enough national feeling to prevent 
them from turning to the French Carolingian, Charles the 
Simple (§ 41). Instead they elected Conrad, the Duke of 
Franconia. Conrad (911-919) tried in vain to crush the other 
dukes. Finally he came to see that his family was not power- 
ful enough to unite Germany; and at his death, with true 
patriotism, he recommended for his successor the mightiest of 
his rivals, Henry of Saxony. 

48. Henry I, 919-936 (the Saxon House). — Henry reversed 
Conrad's policy towards the dukes. He recognized them as 
necessary centers of power; he bound them to himself as 
friends and ruled through them, so that he sometimes appeared 
master of all Germany. He also added finally to his kingdom 
the fifth duchy, Lotharingia. 

But the most important part of Henry's work was his suc- 
cessful defense of the realm against the Hungarians (§ 12). He 
first bought an interval for preparation, a nine years' truce, by 
payment of annual tribute, and he used the time to organize 
his military resources. At many important points near the 
frontier, he built strongholds.^ A militia also was organized 
in the exposed districts, so that one man of nine might always 
be on guard in these forts, while the other eight tilled the land 
of their absent brother. Such fortified places not only afforded 
refuge for the countrymen when invasion came ; they also made 
any invasion difficult. To reduce them was almost impossible, 
and for the invader to pass on, leaving them in his rear, was 
extremely hazardous. When his preparations were complete, 

(the Young) , 876-882 ; Charles the Fat, 882-887; Arnulf, 887-899; Lewis IV 
(the Child), 899-911. - , 

1 Henry ordered that all markets and festivals should he held within 
walled places, so as to make them centers of social life; and in later times 
many of these strongholds grew into great cities, giving to the King his most 
honorahle surname, " the Builder of Cities." He was also called " Henry the 
Fowler," because the messenger from Conrad's brother with the news of the 
election to the throne had found him, falcon on wrist, at his favorite sport of 
hunting in the Harz mountains. 



58 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 49 

Henry refused to pay further tribute, and a new invasion by 
the Hungarians was decisively repulsed. 

In 936, Henry was succeeded by his son Otto. 

49. Otto I, 936-973 : the Dukedoms united ; the Barbarians 
conquered. — Otto the Great carried his father's work to comple- 
tion in both its phases. At his coronation he required the four 
great dukes to serve him as marshal, steward, cup-bearer, and 
chamberlain; and the first years of his reign were spent in 
forcing upon these reluctant princes a real recognition of the 
royal authority. In this work, Otto turned to the clerical 
lords for help. The bishops and abbots, on their part, as in 
France (§ 43 &), favored a strong government and gladly threw 
their mighty influence on the royal side, while in return the 
king augmented their power and their lands. By 950, Otto 
had won. All the dukes had been reduced to obedience^ in- 
deed, for a time, they seemed no longer hereditary local rulers, 
but mere appointees of the king. Under Conrad, the dukes 
had been rivals and enemies ; under Henry, friendly supporters, 
but still possible rivals ; under Otto, they had become servants, 
and, at one time, after years of anxious conflict, all the great 
dukedoms were united in the King's own family.^ 

In protecting Germany from invasion, Otto was even' more 
successful. While he had been busy with internal quarrels, 
the Hungarians had renewed their raids, and in 955 they poured 
into the country in greater force than ever before, — according 
to the chroniclers, numbering a hundred thousand horsemen. 
Augsburg, on the Lech river, detained them by holding out 
under its hero-bishop through a terrible siege, and Otto ad- 
vanced hastily to the relief of the imperiled city. He set out 
with a small body of followers ; but contingents from all Ger- 
many loyally joined him on the march, and Saxons, Franco- 
nians, Suabians, Bavarians, all took part in the deliverance of 
Germany, in the decisive Battle of Leclifeld. No quarter was 

1 The royal victory, however, was far less complete than at first seemed 
the case; and, for many generations the dukes proved centers of resistance 
to royal authority. 



§51] GERMANY — RISE OF NATIVE DYNASTIES. 59 

given in the long and terrible pursuit across the border. The 
Hungarians never again attacked Christendom : they settled in 
the valleys of the Theiss and Danube (where they still live) 
and soon adopted Christianity and entered the family of Euro- 
pean nations (§§ 64 c, 65 a). 

50. German Expansion to the East. — Otto followed up his 
success firmly and wisely. Year by year, the Slavs Avere forced 
farther back, and " maixhes," or "marks," were established 
along the whole eastern frontier, under watchful commanders, 
to ward off attack.^ The heathen barbarians were compelled 
to receive missionaries and to permit the building of monas- 
teries that were to Christianize and civilize them. Private 
enterprise saw an opportunity ; and German nobles, eager for 
land, began a great colonizing movement, which was soon to 
extend Germany on the east from the Elbe to the Oder and to 
carry German civilization and sw^arms of German colonists 
among the Slavs of the Baltic coasts. Otto pointed out the 
direction in which Germany should expand, and indeed began 
the movement which was finally to double the size of his coun- 
try and to civilize even wider areas.^ The prestige of Germany 
was firmly established among neighboring peoples : the war- 
like dukes of Bohemia and Poland and even the famous Harold 
Blue-Tooth, King of Denmark, recognized Otto as overlord. 
Best of all, the various peoples of Germany seemed for a time 
to have learned that safety and honor lay in national union 
under a strong king. 

51. A New Course of Political Development for Germany: 
Otto and the Empire. — Thus, before 960, Otto had succeeded 
apparently (1) in consolidating Germany into the most power- 
ful and best united state in Europe, (2) in warding off all 



1 At the extreme southeast was the East Mark (against the Hungarians) , 
which was to grow into Austria ; another of these marks was the beginning 
of the later Prussia. Cf. Ancient History, § 276 c and note, and see in this 
volume §§ 270 ff. 

2 Read Lavisse, Political History of Europe, 45-48. Cf . also in this volume 
§§ 64 c, 65 a, and maps following pages 70 and 130. 



60 A -NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 52 

attack from without, and (3) in starting his countrymen upon 
a course of national expansion toward tlie barbarous east. He 
now felt strong enough to interfere in Italy and to restore the 
Empire. Two military expeditions across the Alps accomplished 
his design (§ 53) and opened a new chapter of history for both 
Germany and Italy. 

For Further Reading. — Emerton, 90-114, or Tout, Empire and 
Papacy, 12-27, 

VI. THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE. 
The Empire at its Height, Otto I to Henry III, 962-1056. 

The history of the Empire is the key to the whole history of medieval 
Etirope. — Freeman. 

By a strange freak of fortune, the title and traditions of the Caesars 
pass to the latest barbarian arrival within the circle of the civilized nations 
of the west. — Herbert Fisher. 

To men of that time, living amid the perpetual strife of small principali- 
ties, the vision of one universal Empire of law and right shone loith an 
alluring brightness, which we, accustomed to a system of national govern- 
ments and international relations, can hardly understand. — Freeman.^ 

A. Eestokation and Character. 

52. Otto's Motives for restoring the Empire. — For the sixty- 
three years between Arnulf's death and Otto's invasion of 
Italy, the Empire in the West had lapsed.^ The idea, how- 
ever, was still a vital force in Europe, Otto's father, the 
cool and practical Henry, is said to have dreamed grandly of 
its realization, and Otto's own more ardent spirit had long 
been fired by the vision of wider sway and of taking up again 
the imperial work of Charlemagne. 

This aspiration was not mere vulgar ambition. In that age 
a ruler strong enough for the work could not but feel it his su- 
preme duty to restore the Roman Empire, the symbol of univer- 

1 Cf . Freeman's "Holy Roman Empire" in the First Series of Essays, 
especially pages 126, 127, and 133. 

2 Except for the name Emperor, assumed from time to time hy petty 
Italian princes. 



§54] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE — RESTORATION. 61 

sal order and peace. Otto, moreover, had another motive sternly 
practical : the Pope, he believed, had been trying to interfere 
with his control over the ecclesiastical lords of Germany, upon 
whose support the throne rested ; and he thought it needful to 
be able to control that potentate. 

53. The Occasion and the Restoration (962): Otto in Italy, — 
The condition of Italy furnished an excuse for German inter- 
vention. Like other states of the period, Italy was broken into 
fragments, and the disintegration there was so complete that no 
local dynasty could set up even the form of a national king- 
ship. Colonies of Saracens had established themselves on the 
southern coasts, dividing that part of the peninsula with the 
Lombards and the Byzantine Empire; and central Italy was 
devastated by invasion, turbulence, and famine. Finally, in 
the incessant struggles between petty principalities, an im- 
prisoned princess called for help to Otto, the hero of the North. 
Otto seized the opportunity. In a first expedition, he was 
crowned King of Italy, at Pavia, and he married the beautiful 
suppliant, Adelheid, whose adventures had shed romance on 
even the dark pages of Italian history in that age. In a second 
expedition, in 962, Otto was consecrated Emperor hy the Pope at 
Rome. 

Most of Otto's remaining years were spent in restoring order 
in Italy (§ 60). Ten years after the imperial coronation, his 
son was married to a Byzantine princess, and the glorious pomp 
and splendid ceremonial that celebrated this union of the two 
Christian empires gave the world a new sense of the power of 
the German state. 

54. The Restoration Disastrous in the Future, but Natural and Bene- 
ficial at the Time. — The connection with Italy first really lifted Germany 
from its ancient barbarism and brought to it the culture and art of the 
older world. Modern German writers, however, sometimes blame Otto 
bitterly, claiming that his ambition caused needless woe to his country in 
future times. And it is true that Otto was the first of a long line of Ger- 
man kings, who, for three centuries, at intervals of a few years, led 
splendid German armies across the Alps, to melt away beneath the 
Italian sun, and that his policy influenced future German rulers often to 



62 A NEW SERIES OE DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 54 

neglect true German interests. For the whole duration of the Empire, 
German strength and German enterprise were frittered away in foreign 
squabbles, while the opportunity to make a permanent German state and 
to develop German national feeling was lost. Quite as serious were the 
results to Italy. A German king, however much he was "Roman em- 
peror," could hardly enter Italy without a German army at his back, and 
the southern land became in practice a conquered province, ruled by for- 
eigners whom the natives looked upon as uncouth northern barbarians. 

It should be remembered, however, that what Otto did, any great and 
good king in his place would have tried to do. The action was natural, if 
not inevitable, and it was applauded at the time by the best men of both 
Germany and Italy. The very chaos of the age disposed men to dwell 
reverently upon the idea of universal peace and justice under the wise 
providence of a supreme ruler elevated above all temptation ; and for 
centuries to come, many of the greatest and most generous spirits longed 
passionately for the realization of this idea in a universal empire. For 
this faith, four hundred years after Otto, Dante (§ 188) suffered life-long 
exile from his beloved Florence; and Petrarch, even later (§ 189), be- 
lieved one imperial government for all the world as plain a necessity as is 
one head for the humaa body.i Nor was this feeling restricted to lonely 
thinkers : it permeated the masses also ; and, before Otto's fateful journey 
into Italy, while he stood victor amidst the carnage of Lechfeld's glorious 
day, his conquering host with common impulse had hailed him "Emperor 
of the Romans." 

Moreover, despite the evils of the distant future and some serious draw- 
backs from the beginning, the new policy was productive of much good. 
Whether the good balanced the evil, it is perhaps even now impossible to 
say. The restored Empire was to last more than eight hundred years, 
into the nineteenth century (§ 370). During the latter part of this long 
period, it was little more than a mockery ; but for the first three hundred 
years it was a mighty agent in keeping down feudal anarchy, in helping 
to reform the church, in civilizing Germany, in extending the sway of 
Christian civilization over the barbarous Slavs, and in holding together 
Central Europe, — when very possibly no other power could have done 
these things so well. 



1 With reference to the breaking up of Christendom into separate states, 
Petrarch speaks of " the hideous portent of a creature of many heads biting 
and snapping at each other"; see a lengthy extract from Fetrarch's Letter 
to the Romans in Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, 256. Dante wrote his De 
Monarchia to establish this same view of the necessity of one imperial rule 
Cf . also the third theme sentence at the head of Division VI, page GO. 



§55] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE — RESTORATION. 63 

55. The Nature of the Restored Empire. — After its restora- 
tion the Empire is kuown as " the Holy Roman Empire of the 
German People." Two new terms in this title are significant. 

a. The new Empire was Holy : ^ it partook of the nature of 
the church, and its most serious problems — indeed, the ques- 
tion of its success — were to turn upon the relations between 
popes and emperors. 

"The theory of the Medieval Empire is that of a universal Christian 
monarchy. The Roman Empire and the Catholic Churcli are two aspects 
of one society, a society ordained by the Divine Will to spread itself over 
the whole world. At the head of this society in its temporal character, 
as an empire, stands the temporal chief of Christendom, the Roman 
Caesar. At its head in its spiritual character, as a church, stands the 
spiritual chief of Christendom, the Roman Pontiff. Caesar and Pontiff, 
alike, rule by divine right, each as God's immediate vicar within his own 
sphere. EacJi is bound to the other by the closest ties. . . . And each 
of these lofty offices is open to every baptized man ; each alike is purely 
elective. . . . Here is a conception as magnificent as it was impractical. ' ' ^ 

6. The new Empire was German? (1) It was less universal 
than the Carolingian Empire * had been. Charlemagne had 
been ruler over practically all Latin Christendom. The 
restored Empire never included the Erench part of Charle- 
magne's territories, while, outside the old imperial bounds, new 
states were now growing up, north, west, and east, — in Eng- 
land, in the Scandinavian lands, in Spain, in Poland, and in 
Hungary, — all for the most part beyond any real imperial 
control. (2) The fact that France was not included made the 

1 The term " Holy" does not appear in the official title until the time of 
Frederick I (§ 79) ; but the new character appears from Otto's time, and it is 
customary to use this name for the whole period after 962. 

2 Freeman-, "Holy Roman Empire," in First Series of Essays, 136, 137; 
the student should read at least the context of this quotation. The best 
statement upon the subject, probably, is the chapter entitled, " Theory of the 
Medieval Empire" in Bryce's classic work, The Holy Roman Empire. All 
students should read at least pages 104-112 of that chapter. 

3 Cf. the second theme sentence at the head of Division VI. 

4 It would be profitable at this point to review the relation of Charlemagne 
to the older Roman Empire. See Ancient History, §§ 517, 518. 



64 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 56 

new Empire more German, and less Roman, than the old. 
Otto had attached the imperial dignity linally to the German 
kingship, preventing forever its becoming attached to the 
kingship of France or Italy or Burgundy ; and in so doing, 
he had really created a new empire, — one with its elements 
mingled in new proportions. Roman tradition still furnished 
the theory of the world state, but the German 'people furnished 
all the physical siipportM^gon which the actual imperial structure 
rested. 

56. The German and the Roman Crowns. — For three hundred years, 
each holder of the imperial throne was crowned thrice : ^ onc§ at Aachen, 
as King of Germany ;• once at Milan or Pavia, as King of Italy ; and 
finally at Rome, as Emperor. In theory the imperial throne was to be 
filled by free election at Rome, and any free man in Christendom might 
be chosen ; but in practice no one was eligible for the imperial election 
until he had become King of Germany, and every king of Germany who 
could march to Rome was at once saluted Emperor. ^ A candidate cared 
for success in the first election — to the throne of Germany — mainly in 
order to make sure of the third — to the imperial throne. And so, after 
a time, the first election changed its form : the very title " King of Ger- 
many " ceased; and, instead, at Aachen men chose a "King of the 
Romans " — a new title, indicating the nature of the election as a mere 
step to the higher imperial dignity. 

B. The Chukch at the Restoration of the Empire. 

57. The Church the Strongest Bond of Union for Medieval 
Europe. — The hardest thing to understand about the centuries 
we are now studying is the way the church pervaded all the 
life of the time. Christianity was not only a religion : it was 
a government. In a sense, Christendom was a political state. 
Especially was this true while the Empire was in abeyance, 
and afterwards when at times the popes had made themselves 
superior to the emperors (§§ 69, 82-84). Later, there arose 
other agencies to do much of the work that in this early 
period fell to the church. Thus in no Christian land to-day 

1 Often he was crowned a fourth time as King of Burgundy (§ 64 6). 

2 Read Freeman, First Series of Essays, 266. 



§58] THE CHURCH IN THE TENTH CENTURY. 65 

does any church fill so large a place, or hold so great authority, 
as the Catholic church did throughout Western Europe from 
the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. 

During all this time, in fact and in theory, the church in- 
cluded all inhabitants of Christendom, except Jews. Indeed, 
it was as impossible then to think of a man in Christian 
Europe as outside the church, as it is now to think of a 
Frenchman in France outside the French nation. When the 
Carolingian Empire had been shattered into feudal fragments, 
the units that we call national states, in which to-day our 
political life centers, had not yet developed: men still felt 
themselves citizens of a vaster fatherland, and gave to Chris- 
tendom something of the loyalty that we to-day give to our 
country. The unity of this universal church was preserved and 
its authority was exercised by its organized official body, the 
clergy, or "the church" in a narrower sense. The church had 
gained great power by rendering inestimable services. Upon 
it, over large areas, depended not only private morals but 
also public order. With its spiritual thunders and the threat 
of its curse, it many times protected the widow and the 
orphan from the brutal baron who would have regarded no 
earthly power. 

The church building i Of each parish, too, was the social center for the 
people. In it took place tlie most solemn events in each life, — the 
christening, confirmation, marriage, and burial. Near it, on the Sunday 
holiday, between the sacred services, occurred sports and games ; and 
from its steps, the priest gave the people most of the news they received 
about the outside world. 

58. Decline of the Church in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. — 

Even the church, however, could not escape the decay that was 
going on everywhere in the ninth century. Both learning 
and morals declined, in the violence of the times ; and, after 
feudalism had put an end to barbarian invasion, the ferocity 

1 Observe that "church " is used in this section in three senses. The first 
two are easily confused. The student vrill have constant occasion to discrim- 
inate between them in his reading. 



66 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 58 

and greed of that institution tended to infect religion. The 
church was growing worldly. To its great offices were at- 
tached revenues, lands, and political and even military duties. 
Bishops and abbots came to pay more attention to these finan- 
cial and civil matters than to their spiritual duties. They 
bought their places from the kings with money and with 
promises of support; and then sold the lower offices, which 
were under their jurisdiction, on like terms, for their own 
aggrandizement. This evil of simony,^ or the purchase of 
ecclesiastical office, permeated all ranks of the clergy. The 
rule of St. Benedict,^ too, had fallen to decay, and often even 
the monasteries were no longer centers of moral earnest- 
ness. 

The papacy also suffered sadly .^ In the early part of the 
tenth century, it had lost all vital authority over Europe at 
large, and the popes had sunk again to mere bishops of Rome. 
In Rome itself, the papacy lost public reverence and became 
the tool of the nobles in their private quarrels, until popes 
were set up and deposed by corrupt rings of Roman lords. In 
nine years, from 896 to 904, there were nine popes, — the 
changes being connected with furious struggles within the 
city. One pope caused the body of his predecessor, of a dif- 
ferent faction, to be dug up, mutilated, and flung into the 
Tiber. For half a century, infamous women by their intrigues 
raised their lovers and their sons in swift succession to the 
throne of St. Peter. Christendom was left without a head, 
and the evil results called loudly for reform. This reform 
was to come from two sources, — the great emperors (§§ 60, 
63, 65), and a remarkable religious revival within the church 
itself (§ 59). 



1 This name was suggested by the story of the offensive offer of the magi- 
cian Simon, related in the Acts of the Apostles. 

2 Ancient History, §§ 603, 604. 

3 See Ancient History, §§ 627-635, for a brief account of the rise of the 
papacy; for the decline, see Alzog, II, 292-298, and Adams, Qivili^a.tiQni 
227-238. 



§59] THE CHURCH IN THE TENTH CENTURY. 67 

59. Cluny and Reform.^ — In 910, a pious duke founded a 
new monastery at Cluny in Burgundy, and here began one of 
the greatest and most fruitful revivals in history. The abbot 
restored the rules of St. Benedict with such success that soon 
good men everywhere, as they struggled against evil, turned 
to Cluny for advice and leadership. The Benedictine rules, 
however, had left each monastery a separate unit; now a more 
effective organization was adopted. New monasteries, and 
old ones as they were reformed under the influence of Cluniac 
missionaries, were joined as daughter societies to the mother 
monastery of Cluny, The abbot of Cluny appointed the heads 
of the daughter institutions and retained control over them, 
and from time to time there were held assemblies of delegates 
from all the monasteries of the order. This centralized gov- 
ernment produced rapid and wholesome results. Everywhere, 
in that brutal age, the widespread brotherhood lived holy, 
self-denying lives, and built up influence for good about them. 
Their power grew for two centuries, and they came to domi- 
nate the church. 

Besides the reform of individual lives, the leaders of the 
Cluniac movement had two main objects: they sought to re- 
form the machinery of the church by doing aivay with simony 
and luith the marriage of the clergy ; and, in order to accomplish 
the first purpose, they strove to elevate and purify the papacy. 

a. To prevent simony, they insisted that every bishop and abbot 
should be elected by the clergy of the ecclesiastical unit concerned, instead 
of being appointed by the civil power. This was a natural demand. Eor 
many students to-day it is not so easy to understand why the reformers 
objected to the marriage of the clergy. However, men have always had 
a tendency to think of holiness as connected with celibacy ; and from 
almost the beginning of Christianity attempts were made to keep the 
clergy from marrying. Outside of the monasteries these attempts seem to 
have broken down in the ninth century, and over most of Europe the 
clergy were husbands and fathers (§ 38) ; indeed, there had appeared a 

1 Read Tout, Empire and Papacy, 97-101 ; Emerton, 195-198 ; or Adams, 
Civilization, 239-244. Henderson's Documents, 239, gives the " Foundation 
of Cluny." 



68 



A NEW" SEEIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. 



[§60 



tendency to make their offices hereditary. But the men of Cluny believed 
ardently that the clergy could not do their proper work unless they were 
set off from all concern regarding family, so that they might devote their 
lives without reservation to the service of religion. After some two centu- 
ries of bitter struggle the reformers were successful, and the rule that the 
clergy must not marry became universal in the Latin church. 

b. The results of the attempt to exalt the papal power can be consid- 
ered best in connection with the story of the relations between popes and 
emperors (§§ 60 ff.). The great emperors of the tenth and eleventh cen- 
turies began the reformation, which the Cluniac religious revival was 
finally to complete. 

60. Otto I and the Beginning of the Reform of the Papacy. — 

Otto I had tried to Hx tlie relation of tlie popes to the Empire. 

He confirmed the ancient 
"donations "of Pippin and 
Charlemagne/ but he also 
decreed that in the fu- 
ture no pope should be 
consecrated until he had 
taken an oath of allegiance 
to the emperor. Eoman 
patriotism and the papal 
party resented this attempt 
to make the pope a vassal 
of the Empire. Pope John 
XII (a dissolute criminal, 
as it happened) plotted to 
drive the Germans out of 
Italy. Otto deposed him 
and set up another pope in 
his place. Soon after, the 
Romans drove out Otto's 
pope and elected another, 
— a worthy and noble man. 
Otto besieged the city, cap- 
tured it, banished the rival pope, and restored his own candidate. 




The Temporal and the Spiritual 
Power : a mosaic of the tenth century 
in the Church of St. John, Rome, repre- 
senting God giving tlie keys to St. Peter 
and the banner to Constantine. — From 
Lacroix, Vie Militaire. 



1 Ancient History, §§ 6^. 635, 638. 



§62] THE EMPIRE — OTTO I TO HENRY III. 69 

Otto's purpose was mainly political, and lie had begun a 
struggle between popes and emperors, whicli was to endure 
three hundred years ; but incidentally he had also begun a re- 
form of the papacy which was to lift it to a pinnacle of glory. 

61. Three Theories of the Rslations of Popes and Emperors. — This 
struggle soon forced men to define their ideas about the relations of pope 
and emperor, and three theories appeared : (1) that the pope and emperor 
were equal and independent heads of Christendom, — one of the spiritual 
power, the other of the physical power, — bound, however, to act in close 
agreement and harmony ; (2) that the pope was independent in purely 
spiritual concerns, but that in political matters , as a ruling prince of the 
Empire, he was a vassal of the emperor ; and (3) the Cluny idea that 
the pope as the more direct representative of God was the superior of the 
emperor and able to command his obedience. The first theory was no doubt 
the most nearly in accord with the fundamental idea of a " Holy " Empire 
(cf. § 55 a), and for a long time it seems to have received general acknowl- 
edgment, at least in words ; but, when disputes arose, it could not be 
worked, and in practice men had to choose between the other two theories. 

C. Outline of Political History fkom Otto I to the 
Death of Henky III, 973-1056. 

62. Reference Table of German Kings, — from the close of the 
Carolingians to the " Great Interregnum," 911-1254.1 

a. Conrad I (Franconian), 911-918. 

h. The Saxon Dynasty : Henry I, 919-936 ; Otto 7, 936-973 (Em- 
peror, 962-973) ; Otto II, 973-983 ; Otto III, 983-1002 ; Henry II, 
1002-1024. 

c. The Franconian Dynasty : Conrad II, 1024-1039 ; Henrif HI, 1039- 

1056; Henry IV, 1056-1106; (Rudolph, Hermann, Conrad, set 
up as claimants against Henry, from 1077 to 1093) ; Henry V, 
1106-1125. 

d. Lothair II (Saxon), 1125-1137. 

e. Hohenstauf en (Suabian) Dynasty: Conrad III, 1138-1152; (Henry 

of Saxony, opponent) Frederick I, 1152-1190 ; Henry VI, 1190- 
1197; {Welf Dynasty, Otto IV, 1198-1218, during minority of 
Frederick II ; opposed by Frederick's uncle, Philip, until 1208) ; 
Frederick II, 1218-1250 ; Conrad IV, 1250-1254. 

^ The earlier German kings are named in § 47, note. The kings in the pres- 
ent table, after Otto I, were also all Roman Emperors ; but they usually began 



70 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 63 

63. Otto II and Otto III. — The ten years of Otto II were 
spent mainly upon Italian interests : the danger to Germaoy 
from the imperial dignity of her king was already appear- 
ing. It became plainer in the next reign. Otto III (983-1002) 
was only three years old at his father's death. The first Otto 
had been German in feeling, as in blood. His grandson, this 
third Otto, was more Roman, and even more Greek, than he 
was German. He had been educated under the influence of 
his Greek mother and his Italian grandmother (§ 53). His 
learning won him the title '' Wonder of the World," but it had 
also imbued him with notions ill-suited to a German king. He 
grew to manhood, devoted to religion and enthusiastic for 
church reform, but with absurdly exalted ideas of his imperial 
position. He was unselfish, ardent, noble, but visionary, mys- 
tical, unpractical. 

Otto assumed the government in 996, while a boy sixteen 
years old, and the remaining six years of his short life were 
spent in Italy. His first concern was to elevate the papacy, 
and he at once appointed to that dignity his cousin and 
intimate friend, Bruno, who took the name of Gregory V.^ 
Says Emerton {Medieval Europe, 135): — ■ 

For a moment it seemed as if Empire and papacy, in the Iiands of 
these two enthusiastic youtlis united by ties of blood and by the closest 
sympathy, might be about to realize the ideal of the medieval world, — 
each standing for the highest expression of authority in the Christian 
community, and yet each aiding the other to carry out his peculiar aims. 

to rule as emperors somewhat later than the dates when their kingly rule 
began. To secure the succession to his family, the emperor usually secured 
the election of his son to the kingship in his own lifetime, — sometimes while 
the boy was a mere babe. The theory of election was maintained, and at the 
extinction of a dynasty, the election was real. The elections were conducted 
by the great nobles — for a long time without any settled procedure. Toward 
the close of the period, however, a regular "electoral college" began to 
emerge, — one of the most peculiar institutions of the Middle Ages (§ 159). 

1 Gregory was the first pope from without Italy, and his appointment 
marks an era in the development of the papacy into a world power. Plainly, 
if the bishop of Rome was to be the spiritual head of Christendom, it was 
needful that at his election the choice should not be restricted to Italians. 



GERMAJf COLONIZATION 

ON THE EAST AT THE 

EXPENSE OF SLAVS, LETTS, 

ANB MAGYARS, 800-1400. 

GefTiian ^ Monastery 
; Slav ^ Seat of a Biehop 

Lett ®Seat of an Archbishop 




§64] THE EMPIRE — OTTO I TO HENRY HI. 71 

On Gregory's death, soon after his appointment, Otto appointed 
a Frenchman, Gerbert.^ Gerbert sympathized with Otto in his 
imperial ideas, and the young prince now passed rapidly to 
more and more impractical designs. He began to construct a 
great palace on the Aventine for the imperial residence ; and 
he planned to make Rome the real as well as the nominal 
head of the Empire, so as to rule Germany from that center. 
He introduced Oriental ceremonial and pomp into his court, 
and he dreamed of conquering the Byzantine Empire and 
uniting Greek and Latin Christendoms. But suddenly both 
Germany and Italy flamed into revolt, and in the midst of 
defeat Otto died of fever. A German chronicler of the time 
exclaims : — 

The sin of this king was that he would not look upon the land of his 
nativity, delightful Germany, — so great was his love of dwelling in Italy, 
where savage destruction runs armed with a thousand languors and a thou- 
sand deaths. . . . He designed a great and impossible task, for he tried 
to raise the Roman Empire to its power under the ancient kings. 

64. The Empire in the First Third of the Eleventh Century. — 

The two immediate successors of Otto III gave their energies 
to Germany. While they were so busied, the papacy sank into 
shame and impotence; but they did restore the strength of the 
German kingship. In the half century between Otto I and the 
close of these reigns, four great changes with important bearing 
upon the power of the Empire took place in Western Europe. 

a. On the north, the great Danish state (§ 16), which had 
promised for a time to be a formidable rival, went to pieces 
rapidly after the death of Knut the Great (1035) ; and in this 
connection, it is to be remembered that England was still in 
the period of weakness before the Norman conquest, and that 
France was distracted with feudal anarchy. 

1 Gerbert had been an ally of the Capetians in their struggle with the 
expiring Carolingian line (§ 41), and, while in exile during the reign of the 
last Carolingian, he had been the tutor of the youthful Otto. His unusual 
learning, derived in part from the Spanish Saracens, had made him suspected 
of sorcery by the ignorant. 



72 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 65 

b. On the loest, through, the relationship of the ruling families, 
the kingdom of Burgundy, or Aries, was added to 'the Empire, 
without serious warfare. 

c. On the eastern frontier, the Christian Empire extended 
its military rule over a wide stretch of " marches " ; and, by 
its missionaries, its colonists, and its example, it pushed back 
even farther the borders of heathendom. By the year 1000, 
Poles, Hungarians, and Bohemians had not only accepted 
Christianity, but had also become real states with settled gov- 
ernments. Tliis organization saved these lands from being Ger- 
manized in blood by gradual conquest and settlement, as the 
lands between them and the Elbe had been : they kept their 
Magyar and Slav speech and nationalities; but their civiliza- 
tion was to be German in source and character, and from time 
to time they all recognized some vague overlordship in the 
Empire. 

d. Within Germany, by the steady policy of the great kings, 
the former duchies were beginning to break up into smaller 
units, each depending directly on the king. The extension of 
Germany to the east had added other such states, also ; so 
that now, instead of being composed of four or five large 
governments, the realm was made up of many feudal units, — 
counties, marks, and new duchies, — of varying size. The 
future was to show that under a weak ruler this condition 
would lead to all the more serious anarchy; but for the mo- 
ment it was easier for a strong king to control the many 
smaller, scattered units, than it had been to regulate the five 
powerful duchies. 

65. Henry III (i 039-1 056) came to the throne under more 
promising auspices than any earlier German king. The 
promise was well fulfilled. Henry was a, good man and a 
great ruler, and he raised the German kingship to the highest 
point it was ever to reach. His reign had three important 
phases. 

a. Germany was extended, and strengthened against attacks 
from without. By a series of remarkable victories, Henry 



§65] THE EMPIRE — OTTO I TO HENRY III. 73 

reduced the Magyar kingdom of Hungary and the Slav duke- 
doms of Poland and Bohemia to fiefs of the Empire. The 
relation was wholly different from the uncertain suzerainty 
the Empire had possessed before. Hungary, it is true, broke 
away again in Henry's own reign, and with Poland the con- 
nection was not to be permanent; but Bohemia was to remain 
always part of the Empire and was soon to become one of its 
leading states (§ 159). 

6. Within Germany, both church and state were reformed. 
(1) Henry enforced the " Truce of God " (§ 33), which had 
not before been introduced into Germany, and even tried to 
widen it into the " Peace of the Land," by exacting oaths from 
all German nobles to give up private war and to submit all 
differences to public courts. At the same time he encouraged 
the growing towns by new and wider grants of trading privi- 
leges. (2) He allied himself closely to the party of Cluny, 
and in particular he put down simony. To be sure, he kept 
the appointment of the higher clergy strictly in his own hands, 
but only for the public good : he never sold such offices for 
money or personal advantage. 

c. The papacy ivas again reformed. A boy pope, ten years old, 

— a depraved little wretch, according to the accounts of the time, 

— had given way to three rivals, all claiming the throne of 
St. Peter at once. Under Henry's control, two church councils 
deposed all three claimants and gave power of appointment 
to the Emperor. Henry filled the papal chair four times, 
each time with a German. Perfect harmony existed between 
the Emperor and these popes, and Henry even left his infant 
son under the Pope's guardianship. The rule of that son, the 
future Henry IV, was spent in fierce conflict with the papacy 
(§ 74). 

EoR EuRTHER READING. — Emertou, 135-209 ; Bryce, Holy Boman 
Empire, 103-158 ; Tout, Empire and Papacy, 27-64 ; Stephens, Hilde- 
hrand, 10-37 ; Henderson, Short History of Germany, I, 49-57. 

The references upon Subdivision B (the church) will be given in con- 
nection with the following Division ; see pages 84, 85. 



74 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§66 

VII. EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1056-1122. 

Human pride invented the power of kings ; divine pity established that 
of bishops. . . . He [the pope] may depose emperors. . . . He may 
absolve subjects from their allegiance to ivicked men. . . . He himselj 
may be judged by no one. — Gkegoky VII.^ 

A. HiLDEBRAND, PoPE GrEGOKT VII. 

66. The Youth of Hildebrand. — The central figure in tlie 
great struggle between Empire and papacy was the son of a 
Tuscan peasant. His name was Hildebrand, and he was 
brought up at Eome in a rich monastery, where his uncle 
was abbot." Here the young monk became imbued with the 
ideas of the Cluny reformers, and later he lived for a year 
in the Cluny monastery. His body was frail and his voice 
weak, but he had a fiery soul, indomitable energy, and great 
practical sagacity. His ability soon attracted attention, and 
in 1045, at the age of twenty-one, he became chaplain to the 
pope. Then, for many years, under successive popes, he seems 
to have been the power behind the throne, shaping a growing 
and consistent papal policy. 

67. The Work of Hildebrand as Counsellor. — Three important 
steps in the development of the papacy were taken in this 
period, through Hildebrand's statesmanship. 

a. A close alliance was formed with a popular reform party 
that had appeared in Lombardy. This party was made up 
largely of the lower classes, and was led by popular agitators. 
Its opponents styled it the " Pataria," or the party of the 
ragamuffins. Its purposes were social, religious, and patriotic: 
it opposed the wealth and corruption of the higher clergy, the 

1 The entire statement of Gregory is found in Emerton's Medieval Europe, 
244, 245, and in Henderson's Documents, 366, 367. Students should read it in 
connection with § 68. 

2 This is one illustration of the democratic nature of the church. Long 
after the gulf between nobles and non-nobles in lay society became impassable 
(§26 note), men of humble, and even of servile, birth could rise in the church 
to the highest dignities, and so become the masters of lords and kings. 



§68] EMPIRE AND PAPACY — HILDEBRAND. 75 

dependence of the church upon lay lords, and the dominance 
of Germans in Italy. 

h. In the south of the peninsula, other allies were found. 
Early in the eleventh century, bands of Norman adventurers 
had established themselves in Apulia, and finally their leader, 
Robert Giiiscard (Wiscard, or the crafty), had built up a pow- 
erful Korman state, which in the next century was to be 
known as the Kingdom of Sicily.^ At first, these strangers 
seized territory, not only from Saracen and Greek, but even 
from the Pope ; but, in 1059, Hildebrand negotiated a treaty 
with them which secured for the papacy their powerful aid. 
The Pope conferred upon Robert the title of Duke of Apulia 
and Calabria; and in return, Robert became a vassal of the 
papacy for these fiefs. 

c. A church council was persuaded to adopt a' decree regu- 
lating the method of electing popes (1059). Thereafter the 
election was to be made, not by a gathering summoned and 
controlled by the emperors or by some noble just then in 
power in Rome, but by a fixed and independent body of 
churchmen. This body was to consist of the seven " cardinal 
bishops " of Rome and its vicinity ; but their choice was to 
require confirmation by the other clergy and the people of 
Rome, — while vague clauses in the decree referred also to 
some meaningless authority in the emperor.^ 

68. Hildebrand becomes Gregory VII : Theories and Policy, — 
Hildebrand might have been made pope on more than one 
occasion before he finally accepted the place. At last, in 
1073, an enthusiastic popular uprising, confirmed by the car- 
dinals, forced the election upon him. He took the name of 

1 Special report : the growth of the Norman state ; see Johnson's Normans 
or Freeman's Story of Sicily. 

2 Read Emerton, 217. 218, or Stephens, Hildehrand, 46, 47, or Alzog, II, 
344-348 ; and see Henderson's Documents, 361-365, for the two versions of the 
decree. This decree is the origin of the " College of Cardinals," which still 
elects the popes; the "college" now numhers seventy, representing all the 
important lands in which the Catholic church is found, and no confirmation 
of their choice is required. 



76 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 69 

Gregory VII, and began to work with fresh vigor to make real 
his dream of a universal Koman monarchy, with the pope, not 
the emperor, for its supreme ruler. At first, to be sure, he 
aimed mainly to complete the moral reform of the church and 
to bring it absolutely under papal control ; but the opposition 
he encountered from temporal rulers forced him on to the 
further aim of raising the papacy above all other powers in 
the world. The Empire was to be subject to the papacy, as 
the body to the soul. The pope, as the immediate representa- 
tive of God, was to be the final arbiter between kings.-^ 

Gregory's life proved that his convictions were sincere and 
unselfish. They were shared, too, by the purest and ablest 
churchmen of the age. ISTor was there anything new in them. 
The new thing was for a man to be found with the noble dar- 
ing to try to live up to these ideas when they brought him 
into conflict with the sovereigns of the earth. 

The church itself, however, in the hands of a resolute man, 
was a tremendous power, and it had been taking on an organi- 
zation that was to help in enforcing its claims against temporal 
rulers. Four points in that organization should be noted 
(§§ 69-72), — ecclesiastical courts, power of excommunication 
and interdict, revenues, and the liierarchic organization with 
the system of councils and legates. 

B. The Church in the Age op Hildebrand.^ 

69. Ecclesiastical Courts and Canon Law. — The church had 
its own system of courts, — archdeacons', bishops', archbishops', 
and papal, — altogether independent of the public courts in the 
different lands of Christendom ; and there had been developed 
also a complex system of church law, known as "canon" law.^ 

1 See various letters of Gregory's in Henderson's Documents, 365-405. Cf. 
Stephens' Hildebrand, 153-157. 

2 Much of the following account holds good for the earlier centuries also. 
Of. §§ 5, 57. The best treatments in elementary text-books are in Robinson's 
Western Europe, 201-215, and Munro's Middle Ages, 169-183. 

3 Read Emerton, 582-585, on the canon law; and Jessopp's Friars, SI ff., 
on the exemption of " clerks " from civil jurisdiction. 



§70] HILDEBEAND— THE CHURCH. 77 

The clergy claimed tlie privilege of trial in these courts, no 
matter what the question or ihe charge against them ; and 
cases against laymen might also be tried there when religious 
or moral questions were involved; for instance, cases de- 
pending upon laws of marriage and inheritance, commercial 
morality, taking of interest, and all matters connected with 
church revenues. 

The right of the clergy to be tried in clerical courts was 
known as " benefit of clergy." The practice had its good side. 
Ordinary courts and ordinary law partook of the violent and 
ferocious life of the age. Trials were rude ; and ghastly or 
repulsive punishments were inflicted for trivial offenses, — • 
often, no doubt, upon the innocent. It was a gain when the 
peaceful and moral part of society secured the right to trial in 
more intelligent courts and by more civilized codes.^ 

But the church law was too mild to deal with serious 
crimes. It did not use force in its punishments, but only re- 
quired the offender to punish himself by penances of various 
kinds or by fines, or payments to the church.^ Unfortunately 
this mildness was seriously abused. Its advantages tempted 
men to "take Holy Orders," until, besides the preaching 
clergy and the monks, the land swarmed with "clerics" who 
were really only lawyers, secretaries, scholars, teachers, or 
mere adventurers. Some of these, by their crimes, brought 
disgrace upon the church and danger to the state, and made it 
necessar}' for the civil power, as fast as it grew strong enough, 
to reclaim jurisdiction. On this issue there arose a long strife 
between church and state in many lands. 

70. Penalties. — Despite its gentleness, the church had 
two mighty weapons to compel obedience to its commands, — 



1 Moreover, in the Middle Ages, all corporations, even trade gilds, very 
commonly had courts with considerable power of jurisdiction over their own 
members. The demand of the church was not out of keeping with the ideas 
and practice of the age, as such a claim would be now. (Cf. §§ 112, 113, 180.) 

2 For the worst crimes, it is true, a clerk might be degraded from his 
order, and then for a second offense he might be tried in an ordinary court. 



78 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 71 

excommunication and interdict. A bishop could declare any man 
in his diocese excommunicated, and a pope could decree ex- 
communication against any man in Christendom. In modern 
language, excommunication was a universal boycott for all 
religious and social and business relations. If it was obeyed 
by the community, it cut a man off absolutely from all com- 
munication with his fellows, and practically made him an out- 
law. No one might speak to him or give him food or shelter, 
under danger of similar penalty, and his very presence was 
shunned like the pestilence. 

What excommunication was to the individual, the interdict 
was to a district or a nation. Churches were closed, and no 
religious ceremonies were permitted, except the rites of baptism 
and of extreme unction. No marriage could be performed, and 
there could be no burial in consecrated ground.^ " The dead 
were left unburied, the living were unblessed." 

71. Revenues: Peter's Pence. — All churches and ecclesias- 
tical lords had their revenues, of course, from rents and landed 
properties ; and there were also many dues and fees paid to 
the clergy. But besides all this, — which corresponded fairly 
well to the income of the lay lords of the time, — there was 
also a papal system of taxation extending over all Christendom, 
long before any king had so effective a revenue system for his 
particular country. The most famous element m this taxation 
was Peter'' s Pence, or a penny for each hearth each year, col- 
lected over Western Europe by an organized body of papal 
officers ; much more important, however, were the many enor- 
mous payments made by the clergy. 

72. Political Organization. — In political organization, too, 
the church was ahead of the civil states of Europe. In 

1 In this extreme form, the interdict was rarely proclaimed; and, of 
course, a decree of excommunication against a king was always disregarded 
by many of his followers. But, on the other hand, few kings or peoples could 
hold out against the mere threat of these terrors in an age when religious 
practices were so interwoven with the fiber of daily life. The Pennsylvania 
Reprints, IV, No. 4, gives several decrees of interdict. Notice especially the 
reply to one by the Doge of Venice in 1606. 



§72] HILDEBEAND — THE CHURCH. 79 

England or in France, a "Convocation" of clergy, under an 
archbishop, provided for the church a better machinery for 
unity of action than the civil state had yet attained in its 
rude gatherings of nobles ; while there was no civil organiza- 
tion for Europe at large to correspond with the Councils of 
Christendom summoned by the popes. 

In general, the government of the church was monarchic. No decree of 
a Council was valid without the assent of the pope, and all the lower clergy 
were subject to removal by him. Next to the pope stood the archbishops, 
each with a vagae supervision over the other bishops of his province, and 
with a court for appeals from the bishops' courts. Each bishop was the 
head of a diocese and was charged with the ordination and the oversight 
of the lower clergy in that district. His church was the cathedral, and it 
had its force of canons and other clergy to assist in the work of the bishop's 
court and in the services of religion. Only the bishop could administer 
confirmation or consecrate churches. In each parish, the village priest 
was charged with the care of souls. He heard confession of sins, imposed 
penances, and granted to sincere penitents the absolution without which 
they did not hope for God's forgiveness. To the dying he administered 
extreme unction, and daily he worked for his parishioners the miracle 
of the Mass.i Besides all this hierarchy of secular clergy, there were, of 
course, the numerous bodies of monks in their separate communities.^ 

At Rome, about the papal court, there were large numbers of clergy to 
act as clerks and to assist in preparing and transacting the business of this 
vast centralized government. Moreover, largely by Gregory VII, there 
was created a system of papal "legates" to act in all the lands of 
Europe as ears, eyes, and hands for the pope, somewhat as the Missi 
Dominici three centuries before had done for Charlemagne in his Em- 

1 Roman Catholics, of course, believed then as now that the sacramental 
bread and wine are changed into the very body and blood of Christ. This is 
the doctrine of transubstantiation. 

2 Many new orders of monks arose in this and the next century, — created 
by the same religious revival of wliich mention has just been made. With- 
drawn from the world, as they were, still some of them by their holy lives 
and strong characters came to exercise mighty influence upon society. Per- 
haps the most powerful man in Europe between Pope Gregory VII and Pope 
Innocent III (§ 82) was Bernard of Clairvaux, a simple monk. Munro's 
Middle Ages, 126-131, has an admirable brief account of several of the 
new monastic orders and of Bernard's work. Special reports : Bernard of 
Clairvaux ; Cistercian monks ; Carthusian monks. 



80 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 73 

pire.i These papal representatives could revoke the decisions of bishops' 
courts, or depose the bishops themselves ; and with curt haughtiness 2 
they claimed the obedience of the mightiest kings of Europe. 

G. The Investiture Strife between Emperors and Popes. 

73. An Irrepressible Conflict. — The strife between the rising 
civil states and the claims of the church came to a head upon 
the question of " investitures." The struggle was fiercest in 
the Empire, — where it lasted almost fifty years, from 1075 to 
1122, — and it can best be studied there ; but students of France 
and England will find that it played its part there also. 

The emperor appointed and "invested"^ all bishops and 
abbots. This practice was not always connected with simony, 
but it made that evil much more common, and naturally the 
church tended to regard the two things as practically the 
same. The great conflict was unavoidable. The real cause of 
the strife was the twofold nature of bishops and abbots : they 
were spiritual officers, and, as such, it was not fit that they 
should be appointed by lay rulers ; but they were at the same 
time temporal lords, and, as such, the emperors needed to keep 
control over them. In Germany, nearly half the land and 
resources of the realm were in the hands of these great eccle- 
siastics. Plainly no civil ruler could consent to yield their 
appointment to any power but himself. Just as plainly, no 
great and good pope, with the interests of religion at heart, 
could willingly see these clerical officers appointed by any lay 
power, with the frequent disregard of spiritual interests that 
would surely follow.^ 

1 Aiicient History, § 645. 

2 Notice Shakspere's portraiture of the legate and the kings, in King John, 
Act III, Scene I. 

8 Cf. § 27, for the meaning of the term. 

* Toward the close of the struggle, Henry V (§ 75) and Pope Paschal II 
came to a formal agreement to do away with the cause of the trouble by 
separating church and state : the clerical princes were to give up their fiefs, 
and the emperor then would leave their appointment wholly to the church 
(Emerton, 267, 268). But the plan was too far in advance of the age, and it 
was given up on both sides without serious attempts to put it in force. 



§74J THE INVESTITURE STRIFE. 81 

74. Progress of the Struggle^ to the Deaths of Gregory and of 
Henry IV. — In 1075, Gregory threatened to excommunicate all 
bishops and abbots who should thereafter receive their investi- 
ture from a lay ruler, and, likewise, every lay ruler who should 
venture to invest an ecclesiastic with his office. This was a 
declaration of war. 

Gregory's great opponent was to be the young emperor, 
Henry IV. During the minority of this sovereign (§ Q5, close, 
and § 62), Germany had fallen back toward anarchy, and the 
conditions were serious indeed, when, at fifteen, Henry assumed 
the management of the kingdom (1065). Henry was an able, 
strong-willed ruler, and had it not been for a faulty training 
throughout his youth, he might have become a great and noble 
king. Unhappily, he seems to have been licentious in morals, 
and he was certainly headstrong and violent. He proved a 
generous master to the lower classes and he favored the rising 
towns, but he was to be engaged in a life-long, deadly contest 
with the two great forces of his age, feudalism and the church. 
Soon after his accession, the Saxon nobles revolted, and for 
some years the young King was busied in a desperate effort to 
keep his crown at all. He had just come out victorious, for a 
time, from this contest, when the decree of Gregory regarding 
investitures summoned him to a mightier conflict. 

The opening of the strife was sharp and rude. Henry con- 
tinued to invest clerical lords and also to show favor to some 
whom Gregory had condemned for simony. Gregory sum- 
moned him to Rome, and threatened excommunication unless 
he gave up this policy and also reformed the vices of his 
private life. Henry replied, with a council of German bishops, 
by declaring Gregory guilty of infamous crimes and by pro- 
nouncing his deposition. News of this action was sent to 
Rome, with agents to secure the election of another pope ; and 
the messenger delivered his notice roughly, while Gregory 
was conducting a sacred service. Gregory's response was 
to declare the German bishops excommunicated, and Henry 
deposed. 



82 A NEW SERIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§74 

Henry's letter to Gregory had been addressed, " Hildebrand, not pope 
but false monk" ; and it had closed, "Descend and surrender the apos- 
tolic chair, which thou hast usurped. ... I, Henry, king by the grace 
of God, together with all my bishops, do call to thee, ' Get thee down, 
get down to everlasting damnation.' " Gregory's reply ran : " St. Peter, 
chief of the apostles, . . . for the honor and security of thy church, in 
the name of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I withdraw, 
through thy power and authority, from Henry, the king, who has risen 
against thy church with unheard of insolence, the rule over the whole 
kingdom of the Germans and over Italy. And I absolve all Christians 
from the bonds of the oaths which they have taken and shall take to him ; 
and I forbid any one to serve him as king." i 

Encouraged by this action of the Pope, Henry's enemies in 
Germany again took arms. The clergy fell away, — unable to 
stand before the terrors of the papal bull, — and in a few- 
months Henry was helpless. A council of nobles was called, 
over which the Pope was to preside, to decide the question of 
Henry's deposition. By swift submission, Henry saved his 
crown. He hurried into Italy and met the Pope, already on his 
way across the Alps, at Canossa. The stern Gregory refused 
to see the suppliant, who stood barefoot, in a penitent's garb, 
through three days of extreme cold, amid the snow and rocks 
before the castle gate. Admitted finally to the Pope's presence, 
after promising abject submission to his will, whatever it might 
be, Henry threw himself in tears at the feet of his conqueror, 
crying, " Spare me. Holy Father, spare me ! " Gregory also 
was moved to tears. He raised Henry to his feet, gave him the 
kiss of peace, and promised him absolution. 

But the Pope had pushed his victory too far, or else not far 
enough. The foes of Henry in Germany felt that the Pope 
had deserted them, and the mass of the nation were angered 
by the humiliation of their King.^ The hostile nobles did try 

1 See the documents in full, in Henderson's Documents. 

2 Germany has never altogether ceased to resent the disgrace. In 1872, in 
a conflict between the new German empire and the papal party, Bismarck 
rallied the national feeling to the side of the government by his exclamation, 
"Be sure we shall not go to Canossa! " (§ 482). This sentence is engraved 
upon Bismarck's monument at Harzburg. 



§75] THE INVESTITURE STRIFE. 83 

to set up another king ; but German patriotism rallied around 
Henry, and he easily kept the upper hand. After some delay, 
since there was no change in the matter of royal investitures, 
Gregory issued another decree of deposition against Henry; 
but the ojDportunity was gone. The German bishops, returning 
to Henry's side, again declared Gregory deposed, and went 
through the form of electing another pope in his place. There 
followed a distressing tangle of wars. Finally, Gregory was 
driven from Eome, and soon after he died in the south of Italy 
(1085), exclaiming sadly, "I have loved righteousness and 
hated iniquity ; therefore I die in exile." ^ 

The quarrel was soon renewed with the new Pope, Urban II. 
Henry's sons were stirred up to rebel against their father, wars 
were waged incessantly, and in his old age the Emperor met 
many reverses. For years he was a prisoner, and he died in 
1106, broken-hearted, in the midst of defeat and shame. For 
five years his body lay in unconsecrated ground, before the 
church would remove the curse from his ashes. 

75. The Concordat of Worms. — Henry V, the son of Henry 
IV, had been an ally of the popes against his father, but as 
emperor he was obliged to resist their claims as his father had 
done. Finally, at the city of Worms (1122), the long quarrel 
was settled by a reasonable compromise. Bishops were to be 
elected by the clergy and consecrated by the pope ; but the em- 
peror was to have a possible veto upon any election, inasmuch 
as the candidate was to receive from him the investiture of the 
episcopal lands, which were to be held as by a faithful vassal.^ 

The struggle between Empire and papacy was not over, by any means, 
with the Concordat of Worms ; but one cliapter was closed, and it is well 
to see what had been accomplished. Henry IV had outlived Gregory by 
a score of years, and, though conquered and humiliated, he had prevented 

1 Still, Gregory was in large part victorious. He lives in history as one 
of the world's greatest men, — one who built an empire, not by sword and 
cannon, but by intellect and moral earnestness. 

2 This compromise seems to have been modeled upon one made just before 
in England between Henry I (§ 125) and Anselm. The English contest is a 
good subject for a special report. 



84 A NEW SEEIES OF DARK AGES, 814-1100. [§ 76 

the complete victory of Gregory's ideas. His son, tlie papal ally, had be- 
come the papacy's foe, and had forced that power to a compromise. Still, 
no emperor could ever again make and unmake popes as the Ottos and 
Henry III had done ; while the popes did retain a powerful influence 
In making emperors, ^ and their right even to depose temporal rulers 
had been powerfully asserted. To all men the papacy had become the 
final court of appeal and the chief source of justice, righteousness, and 
mercy. 

76. Political Results of the Struggle : Feudal Anarchy ; Civic Inde- 
pendence. — During the fifty years of incessant conflict between emperors 
and popes, and in the long absence of the emperors from Germany, the 
German nobles had been growing more and more independent of royal 
authority. The popes, of course, had fostered the tendency, as their best 
weapon against the emperors ; and the feudal lords had been able to satisfy 
their rebellious instincts under the guise of a pious alliance. As a result 
the strong German kingship of the eleventh century was dissolving in 
feudal anarchy, and the most that the great successors of the Henrys 
succeeded in doing was for a time to arrest the deplorable tendency. 

One other political result of the contest was wliolly unexpected. The 
pope turned to the city democracies of Italy for help against the emperor 
and the Italian nobles ; and the emperor called upon the German cities 
for aid against the pope and the German nobles. Emperor and pope each 
strove for the monarchic principle, but out of their conflict came strength 
to the beginnings of popular liberty. 

For Further Eeading. — Henderson's Select Documents, 351-409, 
gives much of the source material for the platform of the two parties. 
There are brief accounts in Henderson, Short History of Germany, 58-75; 
Emerton, 212-268; Tout, Empire and Papacy, 110-150; Bryce, Holy 
Boman Empire, 103-163. Roman Catholic views are presented admirably 

1 A contemporary artist painted a famous picture of the Emperor Lothair II 
(§ 62) kneeling before Innocent II for coronation. This painting was preserved 
in the great audience hall of the papal palace, and beneath it was inscribed : 
" The King comes before the gates, first swearing due honor to the city. He 
Is then made the vassal of the Pope, and takes the crown which the latter 
bestows." The second emperor after Lothair, Frederick Barbarossa, in a 
quarrel witli Pope Adrian, objected vehemently to tliis inscription, and finally 
secured the removal of the picture and a partial disclaimer of the theory of 
papal suzerainty, hut the claim was frequently revived. Indeed, it was soon 
revived by Adrian himself: " What were the Franks," he wrote to the Em- 
peror, "till [Pope] Zacharias welcomed Pippin? What is the German king 
now till consecrated at Rome by Holy Hands ? The chair of Peter has given 
and can withdraw its gifts." 



§ 78] GHIBELLINE AND GUELF. 85 

by Alzog, Church History^ and by Barry, The Papal Monarcliy . Storrs, 
Bernard of Clairvaux, lecture ii, gives an illuminating survey of the situa- 
tion and the problems. Other treatments may be consulted in Stills, 
Studies; Stephens, Hildebrand; Vincent, Age of Hildehrand ; Bowden, 
Gregory VII; Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy (ch. xiv on Gregory's reforms) ; 
Milman, Latin Christianity ; and in other church histories. 



VIII. EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1122-1273.1 
A. Conditions under the Hohenstaufen Emperors. 

77. Parties: " Ghibelline " and "Guelf." — The Franconian line 
expired with Henry V, but it w^as soon followed ^ by a dynasty yet more 
brilliant, though possessed of less real power. The Hohenstaufen took 
their name from their ancestral castle, perched upon a crag in the Alps. 
Near this first seat of the family lay the village of Waiblingen, where 
Conrad III, the first emperor of the line, was born. This village also 
gave a name to the family. The chief rivals of Conrad for the throne had 
been Henry the Proud, and afterward his son Henry the Lion, of the Welf^ 
family, which held great possessions in Bavaria and Saxony. In a siege 
during the civil war between Conrad and Henry, these family names, 
Waibling and Welf, are said to have been used as war cries ; certainly 
they finally became party names. The Welfs of course were allied with 
the popes against the Hohenstaufen emperors ; and soon in Italy the tv?o 
names — in softened form, Ghibelline and Guelf — stood respectively for 
the imperial and the papal party.* 

78. The Controversy between Emperors and Popes renewed : the 
Real Point at Issue. — Under the Hohenstaufen, the old strife 
between emperors and popes opened again, — upon new ques- 
tions. At bottom, as before, it was a contest to decide which 

1 The period treated in this Division (VIII) belongs chronologically under 
Chapter III, "The Age of the Crusades " ; but it will prove simpler to con- 
tinue the story of the Empire at this point, since the central interest for the 
Empire is the same as in the epoch we have been studying. 

2 After one intervening reign ; cf . § 62 d. 

3 The English monarchs since George I have been Welfs. 

* The names continued to be used between the two factions in Italian 
towns after they had lost all significance except that of family or local 
interest or ambition, so that we have a byeword, — "as meaningless as the 
squabbles of Guelfs and Ghibellines." In general, the democratic factions 
were Guelfs, while the aristocratic party took the name Ghibelline. 



86 EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1122-1273. [§ 79 

power should be the world-sovereign ; but the immediate occa- 
siou of most of the outbreaks in the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries was a conflict of policies regarding Italy. The em- 
perors were bent upon consolidating the peninsula into a single 
state, with a strong central government. The popes dreaded 
this, and believed that it would put an end to their independ- 
ence, even as spiritual rulers. Accordingly, they gave their 
energies to stirring up enemies against the emperors. 

B. Fkederick Barbarossa and the Lombard League. 

79. Frederick I (1152-1190) : Character and Program. — The 
second Hohenstaufen was Frederick Barbarossa, or Red Beard. 
Mr. Tout calls him "the noblest embodiment of medieval king- 
ship, the most imposing, the most heroic, and the most brilliant 
of the long line of German princes who strove to realize the 
impracticable but glorious political ideal of the Middle Ages." ^ 
Frederick was a distinguished man and general before he be- 
came king. Almost alone among the leaders of the miserable 
Second Crusade (§ 96), he had returned with some glory. As 
sovereign, he was first a German king, and he spent much of 
his life in establishing peace and order in his northern realm. 
This was the most successful part of his work ; but he was 
also a Roman emperor, and he brought to the throne strong 
and clear convictions ^ about the imperial authority. He has 
been fitly called an imperialist Hildebrand, and he strove with 
energy and insight to restore the waning glory of the Empire.^ 

80. The Struggle with the Lombard League : Legnano ; Peace 
of Constance. — These views and plans brought the King into 

1 Empire and Papacy, 247. See also ib., 272, for an excellent estimate of 
Frederick's character and ability. 

2 He was influenced by the revival of Eoman law, with its teaching that 
"what a king pleases has the force of law." This phase of Roman law was 
a chief reason for Frederick's favor to the rising University of Bologna, where 
that subject was taught (§ 180 6) . 

8 Special reports : the city of Rome in the time of Frederick I, especially 
under Arnold of Brescia ; Alexander III and Frederick. 



§80] FEEDERICK BARBAROSSA. 87 

conflict with the rising towns of northern Italy, and the strug- 
gle that folio vsred is to us the most important matter in Fred- 
erick's reign. To the Lombard cities (which had been growing 
in wealth and independence during the long struggle over 
investitures) the imperialistic ideas of the new King meant 
tyranny. To Frederick, the incessant and remorseless private 
wars of town with town, and the bloody faction-fights within 
the leading cities, together with their new republican theories, 
seemed anarchy ; and he determined to reduce these turbulent 
communities to order, and to rule them through imperial lieu- 
tenants stationed in each city. Time after time, German 
armies crossed the Alps to subdue the Lombard towns. Milan, 
the greatest city in the Po valley, was razed to the ground, 
and its inhabitants were scattered in unwalled villages and 
oppressed by crushing taxation. Some years afterward, how- 
ever, while Frederick was at Eome, a sudden pestilence of the 
Italian summer swept away his army ; twenty-five thousand 
men perished in a week, " slain by the angel of the Lord," 
like the host of Sennacherib before Jerusalem, said the papal 
party. The cities seized their chance and flew to arms. They 
had organized in the Lombard League,^ and allied themselves 
with the Pope ; and at the battle of Legnano, 1176, the Emperor 
was completely defeated, barely escaping with life. 

Legnano is one of a very few battles in almost four hundred 
years- of incessant fighting that deserve commemoration. In 
two respects, it stands for the victory of a new age. (1) It was 
won by a citizen infantry against the feudal horsemen who had 
90 long been irresistible in the field, and so it prophesied a new 
era in warfare and consequently in social organization. (2) It 
secured, immediately, the recognition of the freedom of the 
Lombard towns. 

A great Peace Convention was held at Venice, a new kind of 
meeting in history, whither came representatives of all the inter- 



1 Etnerton, 302, 303. This was the first important federation since Greek 
days. Special report : comparison with the Achaean League. 



88 EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1122-1273. [§81 

ested parties. To draw the papal party from the side of his other 
foes, Frederick cast himself at the feet of Pope Alexander III, 
imploring forgiveness (cf . § 74) ; but the Peace of Constance, 
signed soon after, was substantially dictated by the free cities. 
The towns recognized the imperial overlordship in words, and 
bound themselves to pay certain tribute; but they secured the 
recognition of their rights to fortify themselves, to raise their 
own troops, to wage war on their own account, even against 
each other, to coin money, and to regulate all their internal 
concerns. Practically, they had become free republics. 

81. Frederick's Place in History. — Despite the defeat of Legnano, 
Frederick remained tlie greatest and most lionored monarch in Europe. 
His court was one of pomp and splendor. He looked upon France and 
England as fiefs of the Empire, and the sovereigns of those lands regarded 
the Emperor with profound respect, if not quite as their overlord. When 
an old man, Frederick set out upon the Third Crusade (§ 97), and had 
he lived longer, that expedition would probably have had a far different 
ending ; but he was drowned while bathing, after a hot day's march, in 
a little stream in Asia Minor. 

Of all the German kings, Barbarossa, even more than Charlemagne, is 
the popular hero with the German people ; and legends long told how he 
was not dead, but sleeping a magic sleep, up'\,..t. apon a golden throne 
in the heart of the Kyffhauser Mountain, crown on head and scepter in 
hand, waiting for the appointed time, when, in his country's need, he 
should come again to bring the reign of peace ana justice. 

C The Papacy at its Height. 

82. Innocent III ^ (1198-1216). — Barbarossa's son, Henry 
VI (1190-1197), married the heiress of the Norman kingdom 
of Sicily, and so brought South Italy into union with the 
Empire. At Henry's death, his son, afterward Frederick II, 
was a child of three years ; and for a score of years Ghibelline 
and Guelf claimants warred for the imperial crown, with the 
Pop.e holding the balance of power. During this period, more 

1 Upon Innocent, read AIzog,II, 573-586, or Tout's Empire and Papacy, 
313-335. Further accounts may be found in Barry's The Papal Monarchy 
and in Balzani's Popes and Hohenstaufen. 



§82] THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT. 89 

plainly than ever before, the sovereign power in Europe was 
the papacy, under the stern morality, tremendous energy, im- 
perious character, and able administration of Innocent III. 

Innocent set forth the papal claim to the lordship of the 
world in language more glowing and forceful ^ even than that of 
Gregory VII, and he enforced his claims with far more strik- 
ing success. Never was the general reverence for the papacy 
so profound and so widespread. Within the Empire, Innocent 
was favored by the political situation. He became feudal over- 
lord and protector of the Tuscan towns, and he was guardian 
of Frederick, the child-king of Sicily ; thus he was safe from 
attack by Italy, north or south. At the same time, the condi- 
tions in Germany enabled him to make and unmake emperors. 
In Erance and England, it is true, there now ruled mightier 
kings than any previous pope had had to deal with outside the 
Empire ; but even these sovereigns were forced to obey the 
commands of Innocent's legates (§ 72 and note). Philip Augus- 
tus, the haughty and successful sovereign of Erance, was com- 
pelled to take back an innocent wife whom he had just put 
away for another ; and John of England even surrendered his 
kingdom and received it back as a fief of the Holy See, prom- 
ising annual tribute to Rome. The kings of Portugal and 
Aragon, rising Christian states ^ in the Spanish peninsula, were 
Innocent's vassals, and he interfered at will in the government 
of the other kingdoms there, — Navarre, Castile, and Leon, — 
as well as in the new Slavonic kingdoms on the eastern fron- 
tier of Europe. 

Innocent was also a moral reformer, and he led a successful 
movement for a revival within the church.^ He adopted the 
Eriar reform (§ 84), which asked for recognition, and he crushed 
the Albigensian^ movement, which rejected the church (§ 83). 

1 See extracts in Tout, Empire and Papacy, 314, 315. 

2 These states were being formed by warfare against the Moors in 'Spain. 
See § 155 and the map there. 

3 Special report : the Lateran Council of 1215. 

4 The name came from Albi, or Albiga, a, town in southern France, where 
the sect had many adherents. 



90 EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1122-1273. [§ 83 

83. The Crushing of the Albigenses. — The Albigenses were 
tlie most formidable of several heretical sects produced in the 
twelfth century by a general social and religious discontent. 
All these movements seem to have drawn strength chiefly from 
popular feeling against the wealth and corruption of the higher 
clergy; and most of them quickly subsided when the church 
roused and reformed itself. But the Albigenses rejected impor- 
tant doctrines of the church, and soon came to rebel against 
its government. They had their home in Languedoc, or south- 
eastern France, and in that region the dislike for the clergy be- 
came so intense that the old byword, " I had rather be a Jew," 
was exchanged for " I had rather be a priest." Popes and 
church councils made various ineffectual attempts to reclaim 
the heretics, and finally Innocent III proclaimed a holy war 
against them as " more wicked than Saracens." For a hundred 
years, popes had been preaching a war of the cross against the 
Mohammedans in Palestine (§ 93) : now a crusade was preached 
against a sect of Christian heretics. Raymond, the mighty 
Count of Toulouse, tried to protect his subjects ; but the feudal 
nobles of northern France rallied to the Pope's call. Besides 
the religious motive, these lords hated the rising democracy of 
southern city-France, and hungered for its rich plunder. A 
twenty-years' struggle, marked by ferocious massacres, exter- 
minated the heretics and the rising prosperity of Languedoc. 

84. The Begging Brotherhoods (Mendicant Friars).^ — The 
growing towns of the eleventh and twelfth centuries did not at 
first fit into the older organization of the church. Neither the 
rural parish priests nor the monks furnished the machinery to 
care for the religious needs of the crowded populations. The 
poorer inhabitants were miserable in body, too, beyond all 
words, — fever and plague stricken, dying slowly of want and 
filth and wretchedness such as no modern city knows. Early 
in the thirteenth century, these conditions, together with the 



1 The best brief accounts are given in Jessopp's Coining of the Friars, 1-52, 
and in Lea's History of the Inquisition, ch. i. 



§84j THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT. 91 

spread of heretical movements, called forth a general religious 
revival, with the rise of two new orders of religious workers, 
— the Franciscan and the Dominican brotherhoods. 

The Franciscans (1209) took their name from their founder, 
Francis of Assisi. " Saint Francis,'" says Dr. Jessopp, " was the 
John Wesley of the thirteenth century, whom the church did 
7iot cast out."^ He was moved by a passionate pity for the 
ignorant, dying, despairing dregs of the population in the 
medieval Italian towns about him. A little group of eleven 
youths caught the inspiration of his noble enthusiasm and self- 
renunciation. Francis walked to Rome and secured sanction 
for his plans from Innocent III, and at once the little band of 
"brothers" (friars) began their mission. They went forth, 
two and two, to the poor and the outcasts, living from day to 
day in the midst of noisome wretchedness, to act as healers 
and preachers. They nursed lepers, ministered to the poor, and, 
with short, homely, fervent speech, preached to all the love 
of Christ for men and the call to turn from sin. They gave 
themselves utterly to serve their suffering fellows. Money 
they would not touch. Literally they were barefooted beggars, 
with one garment, living from day to day upon chance alms.^ 
They ivere not monks. The monk lived in a quiet cloister, 
and, however beneficial his services were to the world, his first 
care was for his own soul. The friar sought instead to save 
the souls and heal the bodies of others, and he went out into 
the world wherever he could find most suffering and sin. 

The Dominicans (1215) grew out of the zeal of St. Dominic 
to convert the Albigenses from their heresy. Dominic was a 
powerful and fiery preacher, learned in all the theology of the 
age. Thus, while the Franciscans in origin were missionaries 

1 Wesley was the leader of the great Methodist revival in England in the 
eighteenth century, and Dr. Jessopp 's church (the Church of England) "cast 
out " Wesley's followers. Renan, New Studies in Religious History, 305-329, 
has a good study of St. Francis, as has also Jessop, Coming of the Friars, 9-19. 
The best long account in English is Sabatier's St. Francis. 

2 Cf . the precept of Christ to his disciples, Matthew x, 9, 10. The Francis* 
can " rule" is translated in Henderson's Documents, 344. 



92 EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1122-1273. [§ 85 

to the poor to alleviate suffering, the Dominicans were preachers 
to the better classes to combat intellectual error. Naturally 
the Franciscans (G-rey Friars) were of gentler, the Dominicans 
(Black Friars) of sterner, character. 

Before long, however, these differences in character and pur- 
pose disappeared, and the two orders became almost identical. 
They formed a disciplined, omnipresent, devoted soldiery for 
the church and for the papacy, vastly more effective than the 
secluded monks, filling for three centuries the place afterward 
taken by the Jesuits (§ 215).^ At first they had no central 
homes of any kind; but as their numbers grew day by day, 
some fixed abode became necessary. Before long, too, wealth 
was showered upon them. At first, they had renounced prop- 
erty, not only as individuals, like the monks, but even as 
orders ; but afterward they began to accept it in trust for the 
poor, and finally for their own use, until they became among 
the richest orders in Europe. 

D. Frederick IL 

The most gifted of the sons of men, ... a wonderful man in a won- 
derful age. — Freeman. 

85, Character. — Frederick II has been called the last of the 
great medieval emperors and the first of the great modern 
kings. Unlike his grandfather, Barbarossa, he was an Italian 
by birth and nature. In person, he was slight, bald, near- 
sighted. A Mohammedan historian wrote that as a slave he 
would not have brought a hundred drachmas. He was an en- 
thusiastic patron of literature, a founder of one of the early 
universities (§ 180 a), and himself a scholar and an author, of 
no mean ability, in prose and in verse. He wrote charming 
songs, not in Latin, but in the new Italian tongue of every-day 
life ; and Dante (§ 189) afterward regarded him as the father 
of Italian poetry. He was deeply interested in the science of 

1 As early as 1221 the Dominicans reached England, passing at once to 
London, Oxford, York, and other towns. 



§86] FREDERICK II. 93 

the Arabs; he ridiculed trial by ordeal and other medieval 
superstitions ; and his own codes of law were far in advance of 
the barbarous customs and ideas of the age. He was a modern, 
rather than a medieval man, in his habit of thought and feel- 
ing : a many-sided man, warrior, statesman, law-giver, scholar, 
poet. At the same time, in his private life he was immoral, 
and sometimes in his public policy cruel and unscrupulous, 
so that Dante puts him, alone of all the emperors, in hell ; and, 
?.with all his wonderful genius, he gave his life's energies to 
buttressing a hopelessly outgrown and tottering system, so that 
he left no positive result behind him and was only " the most 
dazzling of a long line of imperial failures." 

86. Frederick and the Popes : the Fall of the Hohenstaufen. — 
The death of Innocent III, in 1216, left the field clear for the 
moment for the young Emperor, who was just coming to man- 
hood. Politically, there was an irreconcilable opposition of 
interest between Frederick and the papacy. As Emperor, 
Frederick was master of North Italy ; and as King of Sicily, 
he was master of the South. Thus he seemed about to bring 
to success the cherished policy of his house and to establish 
a consolidated Italy. The chief obstacle to this success was 
the existence of the Papal States, stretching across Italy from 
sea to sea. It was almost inevitable that Frederick should 
wish to join the two parts of his realm. It was certainly 
inevitable that the popes should fear lest their temporal 
principality should be crushed between the two arms of the 
Hohenstaufen power, and that the danger should make them 
Frederick's relentless foes. 

During much of his reign, the Emperor was under sentence 
of excommunication and deposition. On one occasion during 
the struggle, when the papal throne became vacant, it was 
filled by the election of a man who had always been favor- 
able to the imperial side. But Frederick did not deceive 
himself with false hopes : when he was congratulated, he re- 
plied, " I have only lost a friend ; no pope can be a Ghibel- 
line." Innocent IV, the new pope, proved, indeed, one of 



94 EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1122-1273. [§ 87 

the most formidable opponents any emperor had encountered. 
Frederick maintained the war during his life, but towards the 
close with lessening chances of success. He spent his last 
years like a lion at bay, amid the fierce onslaughts of open 
enemies and the cruel treacheries of trusted friends; and his 
death (1250) was followed by quick, complete, and final ruin 
for his plans, and by the extinction of his family in the 
relentless strife waged against them by the papal party. 

In 1254, the death of Frederick's oldest son, Conrad IV, 
ushered in a long interregnum for the Empire, and marked 
the separation of Germany from Italy. To crush another of 
Frederick's sons, Manfred, in Sicily, the Pope called in Charles 
of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France (§ 149), and gave him 
the Sicilian crown. ^ 

For Further Reading. — EmertQn, 271-356 ; Tout, 245-273, 304-335, 
358-892 ; Henderson, Short History of Germany, ch. iv ; Bryce, Holy 
Roman Empire^ clis. xi and xiii. Longer treatments may be consulted in 
iiarry, The Papal Monarchy ; Freeman, "Frederick King of Italy" and 
"Frederick II," in First Series of Essays ,' Milman, Latin Christianity ^ 
Balzani, Popes and Hohenstaufen ; Alzog, Church History ; Lea, History 
of the Inquisition (opening chapters) ; and A. L. Smith, Frederick II, the 
Wonder of the World. 



IX. RESULTS OF THE STRIFE BETWEEN EMPERORS AND 

POPES. 

87. Results to the Papacy and to Italy. — The popes had won. 
They had prevented Italian unity ; they had preserved their 
own predominance as princes in central Italy ; and they had 
excluded the Germans. It is true they had not saved Italy 
from foreign domination. They had only called in one for- 
eigner against another ; ^ and as a result of their policy, Italy, 

i Brief special reports : the tragic story of Conrad IV ; of Enzio ; of Man- 
fred; of Conradin. 

2 The calling in of the Angevines (house of Anjou) against the Hohen- 
staufen will remind the student of the calling in of the Franks five centuries 
before against the Lombards {Ancient History , §§ 634, 638). 



§88] RESULT OF STRIFE BETWEEN EMPIRE AND PAPACY. 95 

for centuries to come (§§ 171, 173), was to be the battle 
ground of France, Spain, and Germany. Incidentally, how- 
ever, they had assisted the rising Italian towns in the 
revolt against imperial despotism, and so had helped to pre- 
pare for the rich civic life of northern Italy in the next two 
centuries. 

Apparently, the papacy emerged from the two hundred 
years' contest the unchallenged head of Christendom, and for 
a time some of the wearers of the papal crown took a loftier 
tone toward worldly monarchs than even Gregory or Innocent 
had done. But the victory was short-lived. The growing 
monarchies in France and England were about to rebel against 
papal domination in temporal affairs (§ 163), and, in less than 
fifty years after the death of Frederick II, the papacy entered 
upon the long " Babylonian Captivity " (§ 165). 

88. Results to the Empire and to Germany. — The emperors 
had failed utterly. Two hundred years later, an English 
chronicler wrote of the period following the death of Frederick 
II, " The Empire in a manner ceased here.'" Certainly the 
character of the Empire changed radically: (1) Italy was 
lost, as France had been four centuries earlier; and (2) even 
in theory the union between the spiritual and temporal head- 
ship of Christendom was dissolved. The Empire in character 
was no longer either " Holy " or " Eoman " ; it remained only 
" German." ^ 

This was not all. In Germany also there was a striking 
change. The idea that had made the soul of the Empire was 
gone; but so, too, was the physical embodiment of it in the 
German kingdom (§§ 55 6 and 56). The title King of Germany 
had long since disappeared in the scramble for the higher dig- 
nity of the imperial title (§ 56) ; or, as Freeman puts it, the 

1 From the thirteenth century the Empire is often spoken of as the " Ger- 
man Empire." The term is good as a description, — just as we speak of the 
" Greek Empire" at Constantinople, — hut it is not a proper title in a strict 
sense. The only empire in history with the title " German Empire," is the 
one created by Bismarck and King William in 1871. 



96 EMPIRE AND PAPACY, 1122-1273. [§ 88 

kingly crown of Germaiiy had been "crushed beneath the 
loftier imperial diadem." But now more than crown and title 
had vanished. Says Mr. Bryce, in a sentence of profound 
]|peaning, " The kingdom of Germany broke down beneath the 
weight of the Roman Empire." For the greater part of three 
hundred years, Germany had been the strongest state in Europe 
— far in advance of England or France. That leadership 
was now lost. The emperors had squandered the strength of 
their northern kingdom in the vain attempt to build up a 
kingdom in Italy. For twenty years after the last Hohen- 
staufen (1254-1273), there was no emperor in Germany^ and 
no king. These years were the " Great Interregnum," the 
period of " Fist-latv.'' During this time there was ho pretense 
of central government. The old kingdom had dissolved into 
a mass of petty fragments, some three hundred in number, — 
free cities, duchies, marks, counties, — each virtually an inde- 
pendent monarchy or city-republic. The chance to make a 
united German nation was postponed six hundred years. In 
1273, the name of Emperor was revived by the election of 
Count Rudolph of Hapshurg : but little more than the name 
remained (§§ 158 ff.). 

REVIEW EXERCISES. 

1. Fact drills (cf. Ancient History, 245, 246, for suggestions). 

a. Dates : 843, 962, 987, 1066 ; (class fill in the events). 1075-1254 

(struggle between Empire and papacy), 1122 (Concordat of 

Worms, which divides struggle of Empire and papacy into two 

chapters), 1176 (Legnano). 
6. Fix other events in connection with the dates given above; such as 

Lechfeld, Lombard League, Peace of Constance. 
c. Extend list of terms for brief explanation (see page 51) : Hugh 
. Capet, Gnelf, benefit of clergy, Pataria, Peter''s Pence, Canossa, 

mark states, etc. 



1 Two emperors were elected during this period, — a Spaniard and an Eng- 
lishman (the brother of Henry III) , — but neither of them actually appeared 
in Germany to enter upon the government. 




GERMANY ANB 

ITALY 

Durins tlie Interregnum 
1854.13?8 

SCALE OF MILES 
~S0 100 



EESULT OF STRIFE BETWEEN EMPIRE AND PAPACY 97 

2. Make a syllabus of the work so far. This may be done readily from 
the headings of paragraphs, upon the plan of the Analytical Table of 
Contents in the Ancient History. 

3. Review questions by the class (cf. page 51). For example: give the 
two divisions of the struggle between Empire and papacy, characteriz- 
ing each, and naming leaders and chief events. 

4. Catch-word reviews (cf. Ancient History, 153). 
a. Germany from Charles the Fat to 962. 

h. The Holy Roman Empire, to 1273. 

5. Map review. Compare the four maps on the Empire (including the 
one on the Partition of Verdun) for varying boundaries and for increase 
in number of political divisions. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300. 

I. CONDITIONS IN THE EAST BEFORE THE CRUSADES. 

89. The Mohammedan World ^ before the Coming of the Turk. 
— From 800 to 1100, Western Europe had stood to Asia much 
as Asia now stands to Europe. It was far below both the Greek 
and the Mohammedan world in civilization. The Moham- 
medans still ruled from the Pyrenees to the Ganges and the 
Jaxartes. This wide dominion, it is true, was broken up into 
many states, but the civilization of the Saracens had not yel 
begun to decline. They had utilized the old culture of Persia 
and of Greece. Their governments were as good as the Oriental 
world had ever known. Their roads and canals encouraged 
commerce and bound together distant regions. Their magnifi- 
cent cities were built with a peculiar and beautiful architec- 
ture.^ Their manufactures were the finest in the world, both 
for beautiful design and for delicate workmanship. Their 
glass and pottery and metal work, their dye-stuffs, their paper, 
their preparations of leather, all represented industries almost 
or wholly unknown to the West. We still speak of " Toledo " 
blades and " Morocco " leather. Their agriculture was scien- 
tific, with the use of irrigation and fertilizers ; and by grafting 
they had produced many new varieties of fruit and flowers. 

In intellectual lines their superiority was no less mai'ked. 
While Europe had only a few monastic schools to light its 

1 On early Mohammedanism, see Ancient History, §§ 620-626 and 648. 

2 Saracenic architecture was characterized by the horse-shoe arch, the 
dome, the turret, the graceful minaret, and a rich ornament of " arabesque." 

98 



§90] 



THE EAST BEFORE THE CRUSADES. 



99 



"Dark Ages/' the Arabs had great universities, with libraries 
containing hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. Philosophy, 
theology, law, rhetoric, were subjects for special study ; much 
progress had been made in astronomy ; chemistry had been 
begun; algebra had been greatly developed; spherical trigo- 
nometry had been created; and while Europe still treated 




The Court of Lions, Alhambra. 

disease from the point of view of an Indian " Medicine Man," 
the Saracens had established, on Greek foundations, a real 
science of medicine. 

90. The Byzantine Empire. — Midway in character, as in 
geographical position, between Latin Europe and Mohammedan 
Asia, lay the Greek Empire, living on for centuries its quiet, 
orderly life. In material prosperity it was unexcelled any- 
where in the world, and in intellectual activity it was surpassed 
only by the Saracens. Until recently, writers have been 



Lore. 



100 



AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300. 



[§90 



accustomed to refer to the Greek Empire as altogether mean 
and uninteresting. The opinion of later scholars is indicated 
in the following brief characterizations.^ 

"A government which with all its faults, for many centuries discharged 
its functions better than any contemporary government in the world. 

. . . Wise legislators, able ad- 
ministrators, valiant generals, 
profound scholars, acute theolo- 
gians were the natural product 
of the soil, century after cen- 
tury." — Freeman, "Byzantine 
Empire," in the Third Series 
of Essays. 

" The Empire of the East 
maintained its existence like an 
agitated flame, sending forth 
great gleams of light, which van- 
ished only to reappear with re- 
newed brightness. During more 
than six centuries [after Charle- 
magne's Empire fell] it defended 
itself against the darkness that 
finally overtook it." — Lavisse, 
Political History of Europe, 30. 

The Empire was a civil- 
ized state, standing on the 
defensive against barbarian 
attack, and waging its wars 
mainly by means of Norse 
mercenaries. Its emperors 
were often devoted scholars 
and able authors, as well 
as great rulers. Constanti- 
nople in magnificence and extent was unapproached by the 
rude towns of France and Germany ; and its wealth, splendor, 

1 There are good statements in Tout's Empire and Papacy , 151, 152; and 
see, for detail, 152-175. Students may consult also Oman's Byzantine Em' 
pire, and Finlay's History of Greece, 




Doorway to the Hall of the 
Ambassadors, Alhambra. 




101 



102 AGE OP THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300. [§91 

and comforts, — its paved and lighted streets, its scliools and 
theaters, its orderly police system, its hospitals and parks, — 
were all new features to the few visitors from the West. Such 
trade as Western Europe possessed, was mainly in Greek 
hands ; and the " Byzant," the coin of Constantinople, was the 
standard of coinage over Europe. 

During most of its history, the Empire comprised the greater 
part of Asia Minor, many islands, and at least the coast regions 
of the Balkan peninsula in Europe. The more distant parts 
of that peninsula were divided between two Slav peoples, the 
Servians and the Bulgarians. ■■• These peoples were sometimes 
tributaries, sometimes foes, of Constantinople, but from that 
source, they, like the Russians, had drawn their Christianity 
and civilization. 

91. Appearance of the Turks. — In the eleventh century, the 
civilization of the Saracens received a fatal blow, and the 
existence of the Greek Empire was endangered. Political 
supremacy in the Mohammedan world fell to the Seljuk Turks, 
a new Tartar people from beyond the Jaxartes. The Turks 
were to play somewhat the same part in the Saracenic world 
that the Teutons had played in the old Roman world, — with this 
tremendous difference, that even to the present day they have 
not assimilated civilization. The Saracenic culture survived 
long enough to be transplanted into Europe during the cru- 
sades, but in its own home it was doomed to swift decay. 

The Turks were at least mighty soldiers, and they began a 
new era of Mohammedan conquest. Almost at once the greater 
part of the Greek Empire fell into their hands. They overran 
Asia Minor, and established a number of principalities there, — 
one of them, called the Empire of "Roum" (Rome), with its 
capital at Nicea, only seventy miles from Constantinople. In 
terror, the Greek Emperor turned to Western Christendom for 
aid ; and his appeal was the signal for two centuries of war, 
cross against crescent. 

1 Ancient History, §§ 581, 624. 



§92] CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 103 

II. THE CEUSADES. 

The West takes the Offensive against the East. 

The point upon which the Middle Ages turned from the darkness and 
disorder of the earlier times to the greater light and order of modern times. 
— George Burton Adams. 

A lamentable tale of divided counsels, of incredible ignorance, of heroic 
bravery, and of frightful sacrifice. — Emerton. 

A. Character and Causes. 

92. Place in History. — In the ninth century, Europe for a 
while had seemed defenseless against plundering bands of 
Novse or Saracen raiders, but now — so strong had it grown 
under the military system of feudalism — for two hundred 
years it poured a ceaseless stream of mailed knights into Asia. 
From about 1100 to about 1300, there was fighting between 
Christian and Mohammedan in the East, and during all this 
time bands of nobles from various parts of Europe kept going 
off to join the war. At times, it is true, there were particularly 
impressive movements of mighty armies into Asia, and these 
are commonly known as the eight crusades ; but this number- 
ing of a few great expeditions must not blind us to the more 
important fact that the conflict was practically continuous. 

To a broad view, the crusades were one more chapter in the 
age-long struggle between East and West,^ in which Marathon, 
Zama, Arbela, and Tours had been earlier episodes. But it is 
also true that the appearance of the Turk gave a new aspect 
to the strife. It was no longer a conflict between two types 
of civilization. It was thenceforth for centuries a conflict 
between the only possible civilization and a brutal and destruc- 
tive barbarism, — as before had been the case only at brief 
moments of time, in the old Scythian invasions or in the attack 
of Attila's Huns.^ 

1 Cf . Ancient History, §§ 153, 176, 240, 358, 625. 

2 Ancient History, § 570. True, in 1100 the Europeans were excelled in 
culture by the lands which had just fallen to the Turk; but there was no 
hope for those lands after the Turkish conquest. 



104 



AGE OF THE CKUSADES, 1100-1300. 



[§93 



93. Causes of the Crusades : the Greek Appeal and the Abuse of 
Pilgrims by the Turks. Urban at Clermont. — The Greek call 
for aid against the infidel, the common foe of all Christians, 
was the immediate occasion for the crusades ; but that call 

would probably have pro- 
duced little effect if West- 
ern Europe had not had 
deep grievances of its own 
against the Turk. 

The key to the under- 
standing of the crusades 
is found in the fact that 
they ivere simply a new 
form of pilgrimage, and 
the only kind any longer 
liossihle. Pilgrimages to 
holy shrines were a lead- 
ing feature of medieval 
life : good men made them 
to satisfy religious enthu- 
siasm ; evil men, to se- 
cure forgiveness for crime ; 
sick men, to heal bodily 
ills: A pilgrimage was an 
act of worship, and it was 
regarded as meritorious in 
itself. Chief of all pil- 
grimages, of course, was 
that to the land where 
Christ had lived and to 
the tomb where His body 
had been laid. In particular, after the religious revival early 
in the eleventh century (§ 59), a steady stream of pilgrims 
from Europe visited Palestine, sometimes in bands of hundreds. 
In 1064, the archbishop of Mainz led one company of seven 
thousand to the Holy Land. 




Church of the Holy Sepdlcher at 
Jerusalem; present conditiou. This 
church was built by Constantine about 
the year 325 and was restored by the 
Crusaders in 1099. It is supposed to 
contain the place of the burial of Christ. 



§93] CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. 105 

The Saracens had permitted these pilgrimages, and had even 
encouraged them as a means of revenue; but in 1076 the 
Turks captured Jerusalem from the Arabs, and at once began 
to persecute all Christians there. Tales of suffering and of 
wrongs, told by returned pilgrims, filled Europe with shame 
and wrath, and prepared Latin Christendom to respond to the 
Greek Emperor's appeal for aid. Each crusader marched to 
avenge pilgrims and at the same time to make a pilgrimage 
himself. He was " an armed pilgrim " to the holiest of 
shrines. 

The messengers from Constantinople came to Pope Urban, 
as the head of Christendom, in 1095. Twenty years before, 
Gregory VII had wished to put himself at the head of an army 
to relieve the Eastern Empire from a threatened Turkish ad- 
vance, but had been prevented by the strife with Henry IV. 
Now Urban at once assumed the leadership, and at a great 
council of French nobles at Clermont, preached a war of the 
Cross against the infidel. His eloquence ^ thrilled the multitude 
to a frenzy of enthusiasm, and they caught up his cry, " God 
wills it ! God wills it ! " A great expedition was arranged 
for .the following spring, and all over Europe men were called 
upon to " take the cross," — that is, to pledge, themselves to the 
expedition by fastening a red cross on the breast.^ The polit- 
ical motive, to relieve the Greek Empire, sank almost out of 
mind. The crusaders seemed to think only of recovering the 
Holy Sepulcher. 

There were, however, other motives, less noble, and less prominent in 
records, but hardly less potent. Multitudes of nobles were influenced 
largely by greedy hopes of winning new principalities in Asia. Indeed, 
the Greek Emperor, in his letters to western leaders, laid chief emphasis 
on this inducement, and even Pope Urban did not neglect it in his address 
at Clermont. "Wrest the land from that wicked race," said he, "and 

1 See Pennsylvania Reprints, I, No. 2. 

2 Special report: the preaching of Peter the Hermit, its real value, and the 
old error regarding its importance as a cause of the crusades. See, especially. 
Pennsylvania Reprints, I, No. 2. 



106 AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300. [§94 

possess it for yourselves." ^ Many men, too, were moved in great meas- 
ure by military ardor and by the mere spirit of adventure, — tiie desire to 
see the v?orld ; while others found in the crusades a chance to escape pun- 
ishment for crime.'^ 

None the less, the real cause of the crusades was religious zeal : the war 
was truly a " war of the cross," and all these grosser motives only helped 
to rally recruits about a banner which a high enthusiasm had set up. 

B. The Story. 

94. The First Crusade and Preliminary Movements. — The cru- 
sades opened with a pathetic and absurd movement which shows 
both the sincere enthusiasm and the ignorant credulity of the 
age.^ Great hordes of peasantry, impatient of delay, without 
waiting for the army of nobles, set off to rescue the Holy 
Land, under a preaching monk and a beggar knight, Peter the 
Hermit and Walter the Penniless. These multitudes — igno- 
rant, unorganized, almost unarmed, and altogether without 
supplies — expected divine guidance and aid. Most of them 
perished miserably in the terrible journey through the Danube 
valley, either by starvation and disease, or by the attacks of 
the Christian natives, whose lands they were pillaging for food; 
and the remnants, as soon as they reached Asia, were annihi- 
lated by the Turks. 

In the spring of 1096, swarms of the real crusaders began 
to make their way through Europe to Constantinople, the 

1 Closely related to this consideration was the need of some outlet for the 
increasing population of France. That country had just sent the Normans 
into England and Italy, and other hands of adventurers into Portugal. In 
like manner, she now poured her swarming military population into the East. 
The crusading armies were so dominantly French that the Greeks and Mo- 
hammedans came to use the names "Frank" and "Latin" interchangeably, 
and to apply either term to any inhabitant of Western Europe. 

2 Urban dwelt upon this inducement also, and urged those " who have been 
robbers " to "become soldiers of Christ." From the moment a man took the 
cross, the church promised him forgiveness for all past sins, and forbade all 
attacks, even by the law, upon his person or his property. For some curious 
documents illustrating these points, see Pennsylvania Reprints, I, No. 2. 

8 Special report, to show a like lesson: the Children's Crusade. 



§95] THE FIRST CRUSADE. 107 

appointed place of meeting. There they gathered, some three 
hundred thousand strong, according to the chroniclers, — one 
hundred thousand of them mailed horsemen, — the most formi- 
dable army Europe has ever sent against Asia. The Greek 
Emperor, fearful lest these fierce allies might turn upon his 
own realm, hastened their departure into Asia. There they 
endured terrible suffering and loss, in march, skirmish, battle, 
and siege, while the leaders quarreled savagely among them- 
selves ; but fortunately the Mohammedans at this time were 
even more broken up into hostile camps, and in July, 1099, 
the Christians stormed Jerusalem, amid hideous butchery and 
wild transports of religious enthusiasm. 

95. The Latin States in Syria, and the Military Orders. — The 
First Crusade is said to have cost Europe a million lives, — 
counting the reenforcements that poured into Asia each year 
while the struggle had been going on, — but no doubt the fig- 
Tires are greatly exaggerated. Two important political results 
were accomplished. (1) The Greek Empire recovered much 
of Asia Minor. (2) The greater nobles among the crusaders 
divided the conquered Syrian districts among themselves and 
set up there four " Latin states," of which the chief was the 
"Kingdom of Jerusalem." Each ruler divided his realm in 
feudal fashion among his retainers, and, on the soil of Asia, a 
complete feudal society sprang up, to continue the war against 
the crescent. 

These Latin states found the core of their fighting force in a 
new institution, "which combined in a remarkable fashion the 
two opposite ideals of the age, — that of the monk and that of 
the knight. Three orders oi fighting monks arose.^ The Knights 
of St. John, or of the Hospital, grew out of an organization to 
care for the sick and wounded : soon the nurses became them- 
selves warriors and knights ; they took the monk's threefold 
vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and added a fourth, 

1 Brief accounts are given in Emerton, 372-374, and in Tout, Empire and 
Papacy, 189-191. The Teutonic Order is treated in Henderson's Short His- 
tor^j of Germany, 173-181. 



108 



AGE OF THE CKUSADES, 1100-1300. 



[§95 




§98] THE SECOND, THIRD, AND EOURTH CRUSADES. 109 

binding themselves to perpetual warfare against the infidel. 
The Templars arose in like manner out of a society to succor 
distressed pilgrims, and the name came from the fact that the 
eight or nine knights who originally composed the organiza- 
tion dwelt in a house near Solomon's Temple. The Teutonic 
Order grew out of the hospitality of a German merchant 
toward his needy countrymen in Jerusalem. All three orders 
played important parts in later history. 

96. The Second Crusade. — For nearly fifty years the new Latin states, 
reenforced by the annual streams of pilgrim-crusaders, kept the Moham- 
medan from the Holy Land. Finally, however, the enemy began to gain 
ground again, and in 1147, Europe was alarmed by the fall of Edessa, the 
foremost outpost of the Christian power in Syria. St. Bernard (§ 72, 
note) at once preached another great crusade. This time, Emperor 
Conrad III and King Louis VII of France were persuaded to lead the 
expedition. The enterprise failed miserably, from bad generalship and 
ignorance ; but the numbers of crusaders left by it in Palestine enabled 
the Christian states there to make head, for a time, against the enemy. 

97. The Third Crusade. — Each new generation was ready for its new 
crusade ; and forty years after Conrad's failure, the capture of Jerusalem 
by Saladin i called Europe again to arms. The Christian states in Pales- 
tine had been reduced to a mere strip of coast, but now the great sover- 
eigns of Western Europe — Frederick Barharossa of Germany, Philip II 
of France, and Bichard of England — united in a mighty effort for the 
recovery of the Holy Land. The Third Crusade is the best known and 
the most romantic of the whole series ; but it failed to produce important 
results, because of the death of Barbarossa (§ 81) and the jealousies be- 
tween the French and English kings. 

98. Fourth Crusade : the Latin Empire at Constantinople. — The 
true crusading era closed with the Third Crusade. The failure of that 
movement, it is true, at once called forth another effort, but the Fourth 
Crusade was diverted from its purpose as a religious war against the 
infidel into a commercial war upon a Christian state. Venice furnished 
the ships for the expedition ; and her rulers, jealous of Constantinople's 
monopoly of the eastern trade, persuaded the crusaders to attack the 
Greek Empire. For a time that venerable empire disappeared, and the 
crusaders shared the booty among themselves. Venice took some three- 
eighths of the old imperial territory, mostly islands and coast regions; 

1 Special report : character and work of Saladin. 



110 



AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300. 



t§99 



various petty fragments were made into Frankish principalities, like the 
" Uuchy of Athen's " ; ^ and a " Latin Empire " was set up at Constan- 
tinople (1204). Long wars followed between this Frank, or ''Latin,'' 
state and the remnants of the Greek power ; ^ and fifty years later, in 
1261, the Greek Empire at Constantinople was restored. It was to endure 
two centuries more, but it never recovered its former vigor. The Fourth 
Crusade, in its greedy attack upon this ancient champion of Christendom 
in the East, was a crime against the cause of the crusades. 




THE LATIN EMPIRE 



99. The Later Crusades are of minor consequence. Their actual 
military operations were carried on largely in Egypt, which had become a 
chief center of Mohammedan power. After a terrible loss of life in the 
Fifth and Sixth Crusades, the Emperor Frederick II (§§ 85, 86) recovered 
Jerusalem by peaceful negotiation (1230) : but it was soon lost again to the 



1 Advanced students may like to read Finlay's acGOunt of the Dukes of 
Athens, History of Greece, IV, 132-173. It was the brilliant court of these 
medieval "dukes" that Chaucer and Shakspere had in mind in their refer- 
ences to ancient Athenian history; cf. •'Duke Theseus," in A Midsummer 
Night's Dream. 

2 This of course still called itself " Roman," — so that we read lor a time of 
the wars of the " Latins " against the "Romans." 



§100] 



WHY THE CRUSADES CEASED. 



Ill 



Turks. Then, in 1249, Louis IX of France organized the Seventh Crusade. 
This attempt came to nothing ; and the crusading spirit expired with 
another expedition, twenty years later, in which Louis died at Tunis. 

Before 1300, the last territory of the Latins in Syria had fallen finally 
to the Turks ; and thereafter, men who still wished to fight for the cross 
went to aid the Christian princes in Spain 

against the Moors, or warred against the inT^-iK- "'»-: — ~ — --^ — ■"■ — ■ 
heathen on the northeast of Europe. The 
Teutonic order removed to Germany and took 
up the conquest and settlement of heathen 
Prussia, so laying the foundation for the great- 
ness of a future German state.^ The Knights 
of St. John withdrew to Rhodes, where in 
constant warfare, for two hundred yeai's more, 
they formed the outpost of Christendom against 
Mohammedanism. 

100. Why the Crusades ceased. — The cru- 
sades ceased because they had themselves pro- 
duced a new age and a new spirit. Men had 
found interests and duties nearer home. This 
is well shown in a story told by Joinville in his 
life of St. Louis (cf. § 40). Joinville, one of 
the greatest nobles of France, came of a family 
of famous crusaders; he had accompanied 
Louis IX on the Seventh Crusade, and had 
persisted in continuing it after all the other 
counsellors of the King had advised return ; 
but when Louis made his second expedition, 
Joinville stoutly refused to go at all. The 
King had summoned his nobles to a great 
assembly. Joinyille, suspecting the purpose, 
tried to excuse himself from attending ; and, 

when he arrived, he found the other nobles in consternation. "Never 
believe me," said one knight of the royal council, "if the King is not 
going to take the cross." Whereupon another replied, "If he does, it 
will be one of the saddest days that ever befell France. And if we do 
not take the cross we shall lose the King's affection ; and if we do take it, 
we shall lose God's favor, because it will not be on His account that we 
take it." Joinville was pressed by the King to join, — "Whereto I replied 
that while I was serving God and the King beyond sea before, the ofiicers 




Effigy from a Funeral 
Slab in Salisbury Cathe- 
dral, 1250. The crossing 
of the legs indicates a 
crusader. 



1 See maps following pages 70 and 130. 



112 AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300. [§ 101 

of the King had ruined myself and impoverished my people ; and that if 
I wished now to please God I should remain here to defend my people ; 
for if I risked myself for the cross when I saw clearly that it would be 
for the damage of my people, I should bring down upon me the wrath of 
God, who gave his life to save His people. . . . And I considered that 
those committed a deadly sin who advised him to that voyage, because 
France was then at peace with itself and all its neighbors, and after his 
departure, its condition has never ceased to grow worse and worse." 

C Results upon Western Europe. 

101. Importance. — During the crusading centuries, Europe 
made great progress in culture. Sometimes this advance is 
ascribed wholly to the crusades. These movements themselves, 
however, would not have been possible, if an advance from the 
condition of the ninth century had not already begun. But, 
though the crusades did not begin the advance, they did iur 
crease and modify it. They failed of their avowed object; 
but they retarded Mohammedan advance for some centuries, 
and their indirect results upon Europe were vastly more im- 
portant to the world than the recovery of Palestine would 
have been. 

102. Intellectual Results. — In their effect upon the intellect, 
the crusades stand to medieval Europe somewhat as the Per- 
sian wars to Greece, or the Punic wars to Rome : they brought 
new energies into play and opened up new worlds of thought. 
They gave at once some new possessions in science, art, medical 
knowledge, and architecture. They furnished heroic figures 
and a romantic setting for the poet's use, so that literary ac- 
tivity was stimulated and numerous histories of the crusades 
were written. The horizon was widened : men had gained ac- 
quaintance with new lands, new peoples, new standards of life 
and conduct. Best of all, Europeans had learned that there 
was more to learn and that the despised infidel could teach 
them much. Even among the Arabs they had found men 
brave, just, honorable, and religious. There was a new stir in 
the intellectual atmosphere, and the way was prepared for the 
intellectual uprising of the Renaissance (§§ 179-189). 



§104] RESULTS UPON WESTERN EUROPE. 113 

103. Commercial Results. — As long as the Latin states in 
Syria lasted (nearly two hundred years), they were practically 
military colonies, dependent upon Europe for weapons, horses, 
and supplies of food. From the first, such supplies had to be 
transported by sea, and, after the Second Crusade, the crusaders 
themselves always journeyed by ship. This stimulated ship- 
building, and led to an increased production in Europe of many 
commodities for these new markets. 

Even more important was the reappearance in the West of 
long-forgotten Oriental products.^ Europeans now learned to 
use sugar-cane, spices, dates, buckwheat, sesame, saffron, apri- 
cots, melons, oils, perfumes,, and various drugs and dyes, and, 
among new objects of manufacture, cottons, silks, rugs, calicoes, 
muslins (from Mosul), damasks (from Damascus), satins, 
velvets, delicate glassware, the cross-bow, the windmill. Many 
of these things became almost necessaries of life ; some of them 
were soon grown or manufactured in Europe ; others, like 
spices,^ could not be produced there. In consequence, commerce 
with Asia augmented enormously. For a time, Venice and 
Genoa, assisted by their favorable positions, monopolized much 
of the new carrying-trade, but all the ports of Western Europe 
were more or less affected.^ 

104. Money replaces Barter,* — All these commercial transac- 
tions, as well as the fitting out of the crusades themselves, 
called for money. The system of barter and of exchange of 
services, by which Europe had lived for some centuries, was 
outgrown, and a new economic system was born. Bankers 
now appeared,® and coinage received a marvelous impetus. 

1 On the older trade with the East, see Ancient History, § 478. 

2 In the absence of fresh meat in winter and of our modern root-foods, 
spices became of immense importance for the table. 

8 This commercial activity called for quicker methods of reckoning ; and 
at this time Europe adopted the Arabic numerals {Ancient History, § 2 note). 

* Cunningham, Western Civilization, II, 74-77; Adams, Civilization, 297. 

6 Until this time the Jews had been the only money-lenders. Christians 
had regarded all lending for interest (usury) as sinful. An excellent topic 
for a report by an advanced student is the treatment of the Jews in Western 
Europe during the Middle Ages. 



114 AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300. C§ 105 

105. Political and Social Results of the Crusades. — The 
crusades undermined feudalism and encouraged new social 
forces. The introduction of money did away with the eco- 
nomic basis of feudalism (§ 23): the relations between tenant 
and landlord no longer needed to rest upon exchange of services 
for land. The presence of money, too, enabled the kings to 
collect national revenues, and so to maintain disciplined and 
regular standing armies, more efficient than the old feudal 
array (§ 28). But the crusades struck more direct blows than 
these at feudalism. They swept away multitudes of the feudal 
lords themselves. Hundreds of thousands of barons and 
knights squandered their possessions in preparing for the 
expedition, and then left their bones in Palestine ; so that in 
Europe the ground was cleared for a new society and for a new 
system of government. 

And the crusades helped new social and political systems to 
grow up, to take the place vacated by the dying feudalism. 
To get money wherewith to equip their followers for the 
crusades, the great barons mortgaged their possessions to the 
kings, and sometimes the smaller barons sold theirs outright, 
while both classes sold charters of rights to the rising towns. 
Thus the kings consolidated their dominions and got rid of 
dangerous rivals ; and at the same time the towns rose to polit- 
ical power. Until the twelfth century there had been only 
two "estates," or political classes, in European society, — 
clergy and nobles. Now the townsmen appeared as a " third 
estate."^ This "third estate" wanted order, and the kings 
could help to secure it; while the kings wanted inoney, and 
the third estate could supply it. So these two elements allied 
themselves still further against the weakened remnants of the 
feudal system, and soon feudalism was little more than a form. 
It was succeeded, as a political system, by the free cities 

1 The peasantry did not yet count politically, but even they were benefited 
by the new conditions : the fact that they might be tempted to run away to 
the towns (which were always glad to afford them refuge) helped to secure 
them better treatment from their lords. 



§105] RESULTS UPON WESTERN EUROPE. 115 

(§§ 106 ff.) and by the "new monarchies" (§§ 147 ff.)- The 
members of a new nobility which soon appeared, with the title 
and honors of the old, were dependent on the monarch, instead 
of being his rivals. 

For Furthek Reading. — Three contemporary accounts are printed 
in the volume, Chronicles of the Crusades; Joinville's account in his St. 
Louis — one of the three narratives in that volume — is especially excel- 
lent. Further source material will be found in Pennsylvania Beprints, I 
and II, and Archer's Crusade of Bichard I in the series, " English His- 
tory by Contemporary Writers." 

Modern accounts : Archer and Kingsford, The Crusades (probably the 
best account in English ; especially good for the " Kingdom of Jeru- 
salem") ; Tout, Empire and Papacy, 175-197, 295-304; Cox, The Cru- 
sades; Gray, The Children'' s Crusade; Oilman, The Saracens ; ^Exnexton, 
Medieval Europe, ch. xi ; Adams, Civilization, ch. xi ; Pears, Fall of 
Constantinople; Oman, Byzantine Empire, and The Art of War ; Cutts, 
Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, 157-194 ; Lane-Poole, Sal- 
adin ; Perry, St. Louis. See also references in footnotes. 

In fiction : Scott's Talisman. 

Special Reports. — 1. Impressions that a student gets from the 
letters of crusaders given in Pennsylvania Beprints, I, No. 4. 2. The 
Third Crusade. 3. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. 4. The 

warfare of the crusaders (see Oman's History of the Art of War). 

Exercise. — Catchword review of the crusades. 



CHAPTER III. 

WESTERN EUROPE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE 
CRUSADES TO THE REFORMATION, 1100-1520. 

I, THE RISE OF THE TOWNS. 

A. Significance. 

106. Society ceases to be exclusively Rural: a Fourth T3rpe 
added to the Three of Earlier Centuries. — Ancient civilization 
had been a city civilization. Thus, though Gaul was civilized 
late, yet in the last century of Roman rule it contained 
over a hundred flourishing cities with municipal institutions.* 
But in the fifth century a.d., through the barbarian invasions, 
city life in Western Europe gave way to a less organized 
country life. This was one of the most striking and far- 
reaching results of that terrible pe.riod. European society re- 
mained essentially rural for over jive hundred years, and, after the 
development of feudalism, the three typical figures in that society 
were the tonsured priest, the mailed horseman, and the field laborer 
bent with toil and hard fare. Then, in the eleventh century, cities 
again appeared; and alongside the priest, the knight, and the 
peasant, there stood forth another figure, — the toimisman, or 
burgher. 

Feudalism was to remain dominant for a while, but the rising 
towns stood for forces hostile to its life ; and the men of the 
town — traders and artisans — were finally to replace the 
knights as the decisive force in society. Feudalism had arisen 
out of loar, and it ivas militant in purpose and nature. TJie towns 
greiv out of trade ; and, though they could and did fight val- 
iantly, they were essentially industrial. When they fought they 

1 Ancient History, §§ 478, 479. 
116 



§ 107] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RISE OF THE TOWNS. 117 

did so, not as a business, but in order that they might have a 
chance to carry on their real business of peaceful industry. 

107. Material Well-being. — It is difficult for us to realize 
how much this appearance of the burgher meant to European 
society. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw one of the 
greatest social and economic changes in the world's history. 
Labor ceased to be wholly agricultural : the new towns were 
workshops and trading factories. New wants, new comforts, 
new occupations appeared. Rude coiintry barter and "pay- 
ment in kind" were replaced by money transactions and by 
bills of exchange. Peasant villages were transformed into 
walled towns of three thousand or three hundred thousand 
inhabitants.^ Thatched hovels, with dirt floors, gave way 
to comfortable and even stately burghers' homes. Universal 
misery and squalor among the industrial classes were replaced, 
for a large part of the population, by happy luxury ; and there 
followed a lavish expenditure for town halls and cathedrals 
and for civic feasts and shows. 

Still, even on the material side, the medieval European city 
fell far behind the ancient Greek or Roman city or the con- 
temporary Arabian city. There were no street lights at night, 
no city water supply, no sewerage, no street-cleaning, no paving. 
Dead animals rotted in the streets and narrow lanes ; and the 
story is told that on one occasion in the fifteenth century a 
German emperor, warmly welcomed in a loyal city, was almost 
swallowed up, horse and rider, in the bottomless filth, as he 
entered the city-gate. Frankfort, in 1387, found it necessary 
to forbid the building of pig-sties in the public streets, and Ulm 
a little later was troubled by swine running loose. Within 
doors, too, the material prosperity was not for all. Says Dr. 
Jessop, " The sediment of the town population was a dense 

1 Milan, in Italy (§ 80) , counted some three hundred thousand inhabitants 
and some of the largest German cities numbered perhaps fifty thousand ; but 
in general the towns were small, — from three thousand to six thousand peo- 
ple. Up to the year 1500, England had only three cities with over twelve 
thousand inhabitants. 



118 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 107 




Old Street in Rouen, present condition. The Cathedral is visible at 
the opening of the street into the square. Probably the appearance 
of the street has changed little since the fourteenth century. 



§108] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EISE OF THE TOWNS. 119 

slough of stagnant misery, squalor, famine, loathsome disease, 
and dull despair." There was no adequate police system, and 
street fights were constant. At night, no well-to-do citizen stirred 
abroad without his armor and a guard of stout apprentice lads, 
and he was always compelled to fortify and guard his house. 

108. The Political Change. — The change was political also. 
The townsmen became the " third estate " (§ 105). The im- 
portance of the political change, however, great as it was, is 
easily overstated. The townsmen were not the " people " of a 
nation, in the modern sense. They were only one more " class " 
risen from the unreckoned mass, to stand beside the two smaller 
but higher classes previously recognized. Society continued for 
centuries to be organized in classes, not as one people ; and the 
new " third estate " looked down upon the great mass of un- 
skilled workmen and of agricultural laborers with the same 
bigoted and haughty contempt with which it was itself re- 
garded by the nobles.^ So far as the burghers fought for 
popular liberty, they did so unconsciously : they thought only 
of their own liberties and of those of their class ; and their 
spirit was as narrow and jealous as that of any feudal lord. 
Even within a city, political rights, like material comforts, 
were only for a part of the inhabitants, — the traders and the 
skilled artisans. These were organized in gilds, or unions 
(§ 112), and monopolized the government of the city. Un- 
skilled laborers had no political rights. Moreover, the mer- 
chants and the artisans were mutually jealous ; and for two 
centuries (1200-1400), in city after city, the aristocratic mer- 
chant gild struggled in ferocious civil war to shut out the more 
democratic craft gilds from the city government.^ 

For a time in the thirteenth century it must have seemed 
possible that all Europe might give up the feudal for the city 
life, and become an enlarged copy of ancient Greece. The 
Lombard League had defeated the great Barbarossa. The Con- 

1 For an excellent statement, see Adams' Civilization, 305-307. 

2 At Magdeburg in 1302 the democratic party, securing the upper hand, 
burned ten aristocratic aldermen at the stake at one time. 



120 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§108 



federacy of the Rhine (§ 116) claimed equality with the princes 
of the Empire. In southern Erance the cities predominated 
over feudalism. In the rising Christian states in Spain, 
the towns were among the freest in Europe, and were bound 
together in a Holy League to resist feudal encroachment. 

Even in England, an early 
beginning of such a league 
was to be seen in the alliance 
of the Cinque Ports (§ 113). 
In distant Russia, great 
cities, like Novgorod, Vla- 
dimir, Kief, and Moscow, 
had grown up, where the 
ringing of the town bell 
called thousands of citizens 
to arms, to prescribe terms 
to princes. And the germs 
of the future Hanseatic 
League (§ 116) were begin- 
ning to dominate the coasts 
and waters of the northern 
seas. 

Most of these unions, 
however, were short-lived. 
The cities were to remain 
important factors in European life ; indeed they were to grow 
more and more important : but it was soon apparent that there 
was no danger of their becoming the controlling political force. 
Like the ancient city, the medieval town lacked permanence 
and stable order, and could not of itself provide a safe basis 
for popular liberty. No doubt this was well. It was a good 
thing that Europe did not pass too rapidly into the city stage, 
but moved instead toward that larger national life which the 
cities of ancient Greece never reached.^ 




Town Hall, Oddenakde: about 1525. 
From Liibke. 



1 Ancient History, § 93. 



§110] ORIGIN OF THE TOWNS. 121 

At the same time, when the cities fought feudalism, how- 
ever selfishly, they fought on the side of human welfare. The 
townsmen of France or Germany were not *' the people " of 
these lands, and they did not care for national life ; but still 
they helped, more than any other agency, to make peoples and 
nations. They aimed only at their own good, but they wrought 
the good of mankind. 

B. Origin of the Towns, and their Revolt. 

109. Roman Influences in Old Towns. — The origin of the towns is 
obscure. The crusades increased trade, and trade built cities ; but we do 
not know clearly what materials it found to build with, nor what the ex- 
act procedure was. In Italy, and perhaps in southern France, the Roman 
towns had lived on ; but their population had shrunken terribly, their old 
institutions had been altered or altogether lost, and, politically, each one 
had become subject to some bishop or neighboring lord. Before 1100, 
however, Italy and southern France were dotted again with prosperous, 
self-governing cities. It is impossible to say just how far their new insti- 
tutions were based upon their ancient life : but certainly they had some 
relation to the old Roman world ; and, by example and suggestion, they 
must have had something to do with the form of town life in more north- 
ern countries, when it developed there a little later. 

110. The Origin of the New Towns. — Over northern France 
and along the Rhine, the Roman towns for the most part had 
disappeared, and the medieval cities of these regions and of 
England and Germany were essentially new growths. They 
arose in various ways.^ Sometimes they grew out of agricul- 
tural villages, favorably situated for trade and protected by 
the castle of a powerful noble or by the residence of a bishop, 
or around monasteries, out of the groups of artisans and peasants 
attracted by the employment and seciirity there. Sometimes 
they grew up in the "burghs," or fortified places, established 
by Henry the Builder and other kings to check the invasions 
(§ 48). Sometimes a "grant of a market " caused a village, or 
even a place previously uninhabited, to develop into a city. 

1 For outline of different theories, see Ashley's Surveys, 167-212. 



122 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 111 

A Grant of a Market was essentially the grant of a stricter law to 
secure the peace of the market-place, with the establishment of a court to 
enforce that law and to regulate questions of trade. Such grants were 
made sometimes to nobles, who then profited by the market-tolls and 
fines ; but the German kings, from the time of Henry and Otto the Great, 
granted these privileges to groups of traders, especially within certain of 
their fortified places or at a meeting of trade routes. The privileges of a 
market drew settlers ; and sometimes a permanent town grew up, while 
the market-law became the core of a city-constitution. 

The Bight of Asylum was another curious element in town growth. 
This seems to have grown out of the protection anciently afforded fugi- 
tives by temples and churches. Even an escaped serf could not be re- 
claimed by his master, after he had lived unmolested a year and a day 
within the city walls. 

111. Two Centuries of Revolt against the Lords. — At first 
the towns must have seemed merely overgrown villages of 
peasants, with some admixture of traders and artisans. No 
doubt, in northern Europe anyway, each inhabitant remained 
for a while the direct dependant of the feudal lord upon whose 
domain the town grew up. The first great advance lay in 
changing the individual dependence of the citizens into a collec- 
tive dependence of the city. The town, as a corporation, took 
upon itself all the relations of its separate inhabitants toward 
the lord. It was an immense gain when the corporation, 
through its elected officers, negotiated regarding the dues and 
services to be paid by the citizens in a body, instead of each 
helpless individual being left to settle for himself, at the lord's 
mercy .^ Probably the change began in a small way, and grew 
into custom in some districts through the compliance of cer- 
tain lords; but by 1100 the towns generally had begun to 
contend for the express recognition of such conditions in 
" charters." 

They secured their end, by war and by purchase, through 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some towns rose in 

1 The gain was somewhat like that which the trade-union of to-day enjoys, 
compared with the position of single workmen bargaining with a great 
employer. 



§111] 



THE REVOLT OF THE TOWNS. 



123 



arms five or six, or even a dozen, times, at intervals of years, 
and suffered terrible punishment before final success,^ and 
some were never successful. Nor did one victory end the 




EuiNS OF A Rhine Castle, with a modern town below. 

contest. The first charter won from a lord was usually brief 
and vague, and became the occasion for many later struggles 



1 Mrs. Green's Toivn Life, I, 313-316, gives an interesting story of the 
struggle of Bristol with the Lords of Berkeley, about the year 1300. In 
England, however, the conflict was exceedingly mild, compared to that on 
the continent. In particular, in France and Germany, the small noble was 
fiercely bitter toward the towns. In Germany, in the anarchy that followed 
the Hohenstaufen failure and in the long weakness of the central government 
in the next century, the " robber-knights," shut out from the towns by 
the walls, were still wont to descend from their castle-crags upon any un- 
wary townsman, and even upon armed caravans of traders, to plunder and to 
carry off for ransom. Such unhappy prisoners were left in damp dungeons 
until perhaps their limbs rotted off, — so that to "rot a peasant" became a 



124 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 112 

for more precise grants. As a rule, each town had a number 
of these documents, sacredly guarded in its iron-bound town 
chest. 

The great lords felt less jealousy toward the towns than 
the small nobles did, and some of them gave charters Avill- 
ingly, to encourage the growth of cities upon their domains 
and so to secure increased revenue. In the struggle between 
emperors and popes, the emperors sold liberties lavishly to 
German towns, to secure means wherewith to try vainly to 
crush the liberties of Italian towns; while the popes, in turn, 
favored the towns in Italy. During the crusades, too, great 
numbers of lords sold charters recklessly ; and of course, all 
over Europe, the towns found their advantage in the destruc- 
tion of noble families by the crusades. 

112. Organization in Gilds. — The inhabitants of a town, 
except the unskilled laborers, were grouped into gilds. These 
gilds were as old apparently as town life itself in Western 
Europe. The principle underlying the gild organization was, 
that, in a given district, all men occupied in the same kind of 
work ought to be united to help each other and to arrange 
matters of common interest. Each medieval town had its 
merchant gild and its several craft gilds. The latter were 
unions of artisans, — weavers, shoe-makers, glovers, bow-makers, 
drapers, tanners, and so on. York, a small English city, had 
fifty such gilds ; Cologne had eighty ; some towns had even 
a larger number. 

German byword. This horror seems incredible at first, but the physical fact 
is easily understood, if one compreliends the nature of the damp, filthy, fetid, 
cramped dungeons, together with the effect of the rusty irons upon the limbs. 
Even in England as sad a fate might befall a vagrant, through the ordinary 
delays of justice. The Rolls of Henry III (§ 133) contain the following entry: 
" Assizes held at Ludinglond. The jury present that William Le Sawage 
took two men, aliens, and one woman, and imprisoned them at Thoi-lestan, 
and detained them in prison until one of them died and the other lost a foot, 
and the woman lost either foot by putrefaction. Afterward he took them to 
the court of Ludinglond to try them. And when the court saw them, it was 
loath to try them, because they were not attached for any robbery or mis- 
deed. And so they were permitted to depart." 



§112] THE GILDS. 125 

Each craft gild contained three classes of members, — mas- 
ters, journeymen, and apprentices. The master OAvned a shop, 
— probably part of the house where his family lived, — and 
employed one or more journeymen, besides a band of appren- 
tices. Strictly, apprentices were not members of the gild, 
except in prospect, but they were governed by its rules. 
They were boys or youths bound out by their parents for a 
term of years to learn the trade. They lived in the master's 
house, ate at his table, and. he furnished their clothing and 
taught them " all he knew." On the expiration of the term 
of service (three, seven, or ten years), the apprentice became a 
free journeyman, working for wages. For the next few years 
he traveled from place to place, practising his trade in various 
cities, to see the world and to perfect himself in his " mys- 
tery," as the secrets of the trade were called. If he could 
save the small amount of money needed, he finally set up a 
shop of his own and became a master. As a master, he con- 
tinued to work with his own hands, living among his depend- 
ents with a more or less paternal care over them. 

The modern separation between capital and labor had not yet begun, 
so far as the skilled trades were concerned. The gild was not organized, 
as the modern trade-union is, to regulate the relations of workmen to em- 
ployers. It was a brotherhood, containing both workmen and employers. 
Its purposes were (1) to prevent competition (and so all who practised 
the trade were forced to enter the gild and abide by its rules) ; (2) to 
prevent monopoly of materials or opportunity by any of its members (and 
so each "brother" had a right to share in any purchase by another, and 
no one could sell except at appointed times and places) ; (.3) to keep up 
the price (which was fixed by the gild) ; and (4) to maintain a high stand- 
ard of goods (and so the gild punished severely all adulterations, the 
mixing of poor wool with good, and the giving short weight). Thus the 
gild aimed to protect both jyroducer and consumer. 

The gild was also a fraternal insiirance society : it provided assistance 
for a needy member, attended to the burial of a deceased member, and, if 
he died poor, paid pensions to his wife and children and the dowry for his 
daughter's marriage. Moreover, the gild had social features. Indeed, 
many a gild originated as a social club for men engaged in the same trade : 
and throughout the Middle Ages the gild feasts were the chief social 



126 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 113 

events in the lives of the members of the union. In connection with this 
social character, the gilds had many rules minutely regulating the conduct 
of the brethren tovrard one another. ^ , 

C. Political Fate of the Towns in Different Lands. 

113. Towns in England. — The degree of actual independence 

possessed by the towns varied, in different lands, with the 
strength of the royal government. Everywhere out of Eng- 
land, for a time at least, they waged private wars, like feudal 
nobles,^ and exercised the other powers of the greatest lords. 
In England the towns did not grow up till later than on the 
continent. They found the royal authority more firmly estab- 
lished ; and so, like the English nobles, they never possessed 
the extreme feudal independence common elsewhere in Europe. 
The powers they did possess, however, astound a modern stu- 
dent. Each town was an isolated unit. It built its walls and 
armed and trained its citizen-militia to defend them. It 
elected its own officers and prescribed their powers. Even the 
royal officers could not enter its gates without permission from 
the town authorities, and they could exercise no direct control 
within its walls. The townsfolk paid a tax to the government, 
regarding which they or their representatives had been con- 
sulted, and they furnished troops, upon occasion; but both 
tax and troops they levied in their own way and by their own 
officers. Offenses committed within the town were tried in 
the mayor's court, and were punished by ducking in the pond, 
by fines, flogging, mutilation, beheading, or by hanging in 
chains on the town gallows at the city gate.^ The town passed 

1 Special report : what further can he learned regarding the relations of 
the gild members to each other, from the collection of gild regulations^ pub- 
lished in Guernsey Jones' Civilization in the Middle Ages, and in the Penn- 
sylvania Reprints, II, No. 1. 

2 Sometimes the towns became " feudal persons " and took on the forms of 
feudalism: a town became the vassal of a lord, or of the king or emperor, 
and also perhaps a suzerain over nobles or even over vassal towns. 

3 On the continent the city authorities sometimes exposed criminals in iron 
cages, pulled away the flesh of blasphemers with red-hot tongs, and boiled 



§114] TOWNS IN ENGLAND AND IN ITALY. 127 

ordinances upon many matters now regulated by the state or 
the nation. They did not fix their own weights and measures 
and coinage, as the continental towns commonly did ; but each 
town determined its own tariffs on goods brought through its 
gates, and discriminated in favor of its own citizens, even 
against other Englishmen. The Cinque Ports, a league of five 
ports on the English Channel, waged war on their own account 
with French and Flemish towns, while their respective coun- 
tries were at peace ; and it was customary for a town to make 
its own treaties with other English towns regarding trading 
privileges.^ The magistrates supervised all industries and in 
particular they looked after the making and sale of food-stuffs, 
— bread, corn, ale, wine, meat, and fish, — fixing the quality, 
price, and time and place of sale. An important duty of the 
authorities was to provide against a season of scarcity by col- 
lecting grain in the town granaries.^ 

Gradually the English towns lost the more extreme of their 
separate liberties, but not imtil they had received full compen- 
sation for them in the share they secured in Parliament 
(§§ 134-136). 

114. Towns in Italy. — Italy shows the greatest degree of 
town authority. The remoteness of imperial power favored 
city independence at an early period (§ 76), and, in this land, 
medieval town life reached its most vigorous development. 
Indeed, the nobles were compelled to come into the towns and 
become citizens, instead of remaining rural landlords in their 
isolated castles, as they did elsewhere in Europe. The Lom- 
bard League, in the Po valley, numbered sixteen independent 

foi'gers in oil, pouring in cold water from time to time, that death might 
not come too quickly. 

1 Cheyney states (Industrial and SocialHistory of England, 89) that South- 
ampton had formal agreements with seventy towns, and that, in a period 
of twenty years, the London authorities sent three hundred letters on such 
matters to the officials of some ninety towns. 

2 This custom prevailed also on the continent. Emperor Charles V (§ 172) 
in 1540, at Nuremberg, was given bread to taste made from wheat that was 
said to have been kept in the town granary one hundred and eighteen years. 



128 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§114 



cities in its little territory, and each of these bustling com- 
munities possessed an intense and fervid life.^ They gave 
birth to a new art and a new literature, and were soon to be the 
homes of a brilliant and splendid culture (§§ 189 f£.); they 
waged the bitterest, most destructive wars among themselves, 
regarding trading privileges and boundary disputes ; and they 
passed through rapid and frequent revolutions in government, 
with cruel class-struggles in each city (§ 77, note). 




St. Mark's, Venice. — From a photograph. 

Before 1300, most of the Italian cities had sunk under the 
rule of *' tyrants," who found their opportunity in this civic 
strife. Some of these despots were of ancient noble families, 
others were mere military adventurers ; some were enlightened 
rulers, others were among the vilest wretches and most inhuman 
monsters the world has ever seen. Florence, with her strong 
democracy, retained her freedom until after 1400 ; indeed, she 



Compare with the old Greek cities {Ancient History, § 198). 



§116] 



TOWNS IN FRANCE AND IN GERMANY. 



129 



kept the forms of freedom, under her Medici'^ rulers, for nearly 
a century more. Venice, under her remarkable oligarchic 
government, built up a mighty maritime empire, like that of 
Carthage or of Athens, and 
stood forth as one of the 
chief Powers in Europe un- 
til after 1500. By that time 
the Turks had seized much 
of her former territory ; but 
the city retained its separate 
existence and its Jiame as a 
Republic until the wars that 
followed the French Revo- 
lution (§§ 351, 352). 

115. Towns in France. — In 

France the southern towns were 
for a time ahnost as independent 
as those in Italy, and many of 
those in the north secured greater 
liberties than were known in 
England. However, wlien the 
French kings were finally victo- 
rious over feudalism (§ 153), they 
proceeded to perfect the consoli- 
dation of the realm by bringing 
the towns completely under their 

authority. Thus, before 1400, after a shorter life than elsewhere in 
Europe, the early liberties of the towns had wholly disappeared, and they 
were ruled by royal officers, 

116. Towns in Germany : Confederation of the Rhine ; the 
Hansa. — In Germany after 1250 many towns became known 
as ''free cities of the Empire." Like the German principali- 
ties, they were virtually sovereign states, with only nominal 
allegiance to a shadowy emperor (§§ 88, 160). Most of them 
belonged to one of two great leagues : — 







■>K '_:v';|p';''!'--''-9S?v''':- 


1^^ 


m 


.'"v- ■:-/'''\:r-'::^->5'j-x > . 


Blf^F 


^9 


i' ^ '^ 


fm^ 


1 


HH^rj 








^S 


fi'^ 


IHnl 


h 




ImSHIHhII IHBHH flllli 


Hjl^^^>_ 




jj>Ss- ■V'-'i^^i=-?^Mi^lMi*r 


' VAv' , ''•'; 


"^ 



Windows of a Modest House in 

Venice, twelfth century. — From 
Ruskin. (The beauty of design is 
fully equal to that of the fine window 
in the illustration on page 130.) 



1 Special reports: the Medici rule in Florence; famous Florentines from 
1250 to 1500 ; Venice from 1000 to 1500. (For material, see page 132.) 



130 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§116 




a. The Confederacy of the Rhine numbered some fifty of the 
leading towns of southern Germany. It was organized for 
defense against the nobles, and for a time it seemed likely to 
secure a position, in the Diet of the Empire, equal to that of 
the great princes. This brilliant promise was ruined by a vic- 
tory of the princes over the 
League at the battle of 
Doffingen (1388), but many 
of the separate towns re- 
tained their independence 
into the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

&. Tlie Hanseatic League 
("Hansa," — an old Ger- 
man word for "union") 
was composed of eighty 
northern German towns. 
It grew up about 1300, out 
of earlier unions of small 
groups of cities ; and it was organized, not for political purposes, 
like the Lombard and the Rhine Leagues, but to protect trade 
against pirates and robbers, and to secure greater advantages in 
foreign countries than single cities could secure for themselves. 
It came to monopolize and control the trade of the ITorth and 
Baltic Seas and much of the overland trade from Italy. It 
established colonies, or "factories," in foreign cities, as in 
London,^ Novgorod, Bergen, Bruges, and Wisby ; and by war, 
or threats of war, it won trading privileges from the kings of 
England and other northern countries. In 1370 Waldemar of 
Denmark was compelled after long strife to sign the Peace of 

1 See map. The Hanseatic settlement in London was known as the Steel- 
yard. Each such colony had its own government and its own soldiery, inde- 
pendent of those of the other parts of the city in which it was embedded. 
The importance of the Hansa in English trade is indicated by the fact that the 
coin (pound) of the " Easterlings " (from the East, or Baltic, Sea), became 
the " pound sterling " in English currency ; and the trustworthy character of 
their wares is shown by the meaning of the word "sterling " iu QV,X language. 



Windows of a Venetian Palace, thir- 
teenth century. — From Ruskin. 





1 

DOMmiONS OF THE HANSA AND 

OP THE TEUTONIC ORDER AT 

THEIR GREATEST EXTENT. 

(About 1400.) 

Eansa towns are shown thus.- Groningen 
Foreign Factories of the League thus:- Bruges 
Cities in ichich the League, or some of its 
members, possessed trading privileges 
thus:- Yarmouth 

TERIUTORY OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER. 



1330. 

Added up to lilO. 




jpsio 



^/o 



' Skanor 




§110] TOWNS IN GERMANY — THE HANSA. 131 

Strcdsund, wliich provided that future Danish kings must have 
the sanction of the League before they mounted the throne. 
For a century the League was one of the Great Powers of 
Europe. The Hansa flag floated over nearly every merchant 
ship of the northern seas and over every counting house from 
London to Novgorod. The League owned fisheries and mines ; 
and in their trading posts there met for exchange the furs and 



Interior of Hall of Merchant Princes at Dantzig. Originally a 
Hall of the Teutonic Knights (about 1300). — From Liibke. 

hides from Eussia, the grain from Poland, the amber from the 
Baltic coasts, the metals of Saxony, the wines of the Rhine, 
the wool and tin of England, the cloths of Holland, and the 
more distant products of the South and East. 

As the other northern countries developed, the Hansa lost 
its preeminence and its special privileges. Many of its cities 
were ruined in the religious wars of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries. Some of them, however, remained sovereign 
states until late in the nineteenth century; and three of 
them — Hamburg, Bremen, and Lilbeck — entered the present 



132 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 117 

German Empire, when it was formed in 1871, on a footing of 
equality with the other confederating states (§ 472).^ 

FoK Further Reading. — Source material : town charters and gild 
rules are given in Pennsylvania Eeprints, II, No. 1, and by Guernsey 
Jones in his Civilization during the Middle Ages, 121-149. 

Modern accounts : brief statements of great value are to be found in 
Adams, Civilization, 290-310 ; Cheyney, Industrial and Social History of 
England, 57-95 ; Munro, Middle Ages, ch. xiv ; Robinson, Western Europe, 
eh. xviii ; Green, English People, I, 206-225 ; Cunningham, English 
Industry and Commerce, I, 197-214 ; Henderson, Short History of Ger- 
many, I, 181-202; Zimmern, The Haasa Towns; Lodge, Close of the 
Middle Ages, 419-450 (for the Hansa) ; Emerton, Medieval Europe, 
520-540 ; Symonds, Short History of the Benaissanpe in Italy, 13-51 ; 
Duffy, Tuscan Bepuhlics ; Gibbins, Industrial History of England. Ad- 
vanced students may use tlie excellent treatments of Ashley, Economic 
History, I, 67-123, and II, 3-189. All students with time for reading such 
extended worlds will enjoy Mrs. Green's Toivn Life in the Fifteenth 
Century ; Hazlitt's Venetian Bepublic; Mrs. Oliphant's 3Iakers of Venice 
and Makers of Florence ; Villari's Florence; Neil's Venice; Brown's 
Venetian Republic; and the various volumes of the Medieval Town Series, 
especially Rouen, Moscow, Toledo, Florence, Nuremberg, Bruges, Verona, 
and Prague. 

Special Reports. — 1. Mystery plays as presented by the gilds. 
2. The Hansa and the herring fishery. 3. Fairs in the Middle Ages 
(see Cheyney 's Industrial and Social History, 75-79). 

II. RISE OF MONARCHIC STATES. 

117. The " New Monarchies " and their Task. — Before 1300, Europe 
had tried various principles of organization. Feudal aristocracy and 
town democracy had botli been found wanting in order and permanence. 
The ideal of a universal monarchy had been shattered by the quarrel be- 
tween popes and emperors. The papacy (theocratic rule) had seemed to 
come out of that struggle triumphant, but almost at once it was to fall 
before a new form of organization, — the separate monarcMc states, into 
whicli Europe had been growing. Says Lavisse, "From tlie wrecl?; of the 
two universal powers [papacy and empire], the various nationalities 
emerged. Just as Christendom had succeeded the Roman Empire, so 
'Europe' succeeded ' Cliristendom.' " 

1 For the towns of Flanders, see § 162. 



§118] ENGLAND — WHAT THE NORMANS FOUND. 133 

This rise of "New Monarchies," ^ each with a definite territory, is the 
political change that characterized the close of tlie Middle Ages. Each 
such territory had contained several distinct, mutually jealous classes, — 
nobles, burgesses, artisans, clergy, peasantry, — and for centuries, Frencli 
nobility and German nobility had had more in common with each other 
than either had with the townsmen of their own country. So of the 
other classes. Social unity and sympathies had not been national^ Ger- 
man or English: they had followed the lines of class-cleavage across 
Europe. The monarchies were to change all this. They were to weld 
these classes, within each of their respective territories, into one nation 
with a common patriotism. Probably no king put this end before him 
clearly as his task ; but the result followed naturally from the thing the 
king did strive for, — namely, to consolidate the numerous petty feudal 
states within his realm into one state with a uniform administration 
centering in his will. 

While this was being accomplished, some old liberties were lost and 
the monarchs became despots : but the liberties were of a kind that had 
proved to be intertwined with anarchy, and the seeming loss was only 
for a time. A few centuries later there was to grow up a freer, broader, 
more secure freedom than had ever before been possible. 

In Germany and Italy the destructive conflict between papacy and 
Empire ruined all chance for progress toward national monarchies for 
hundreds of years. Until 1250, these countries had been the centers of 
interest; then leadership passed to England, France, and Spain, — the 
lands in which the new monarchic movement was best developed. 

III. EUEOPE BY SEPARATE STATES: ENGLAND TO 1500.2 

A. What the Nokmans Pouxd.^ 

118. Importance of Saxon Local Institutions. — At the time 
of the Norman conquest (§ 16), the Saxons in England had 
developed certain institutions which were to have a lasting 

1 This term " New Monarchy " has come to be used for the despotic, 
centralized monarchies that appeared in France, Spain, and, in some degree, 
in England, about 1500; they were new, as compared with the old Teutonic 
and the feudal kingship. 

2 For England in 1066, review § 16. 

8 Cf. a good brief treatment of Saxon institutions in Andrews' History 
of England, 40-52. Very few books give the recent views upon this topic 
in a form usable by young students. 



134 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 119 

value. Those that pertained to the court and the king's gov- 
ernment were to be replaced, under the conquerors, by some- 
what different Norman institutions ; and the Normans, also, 
drew tighter the loose bonds which previously had held the 
local units together: but the local divisions themselves sur- 
vived, as did also for the most part the old Saxon machinery 
for justice and government within each unit. 

These local divisions were of three orders, — shires, hun- 
dreds, and townships (§§ 119-121). 

119. Shire and Shire Court. — As Wessex had extended her 
sway over the island (§ 16), the former tribal kingdoms sank 
into shires,^ and in the end all England came to be divided into 
about forty units of this name. The shire — or county, as the 
Normans called it — was adopted also by the church as a 
bishop's diocese. Its three important officers were the ealdor- 
man, the sheriff, and the bishoj). In form, the ealdorman was 
appointed by the king and Witan. Oftentimes, however, he 
was the descendant of the ancient tribal chief, and the king 
felt constrained to appoint him ; in any case, he was one of 
the most powerful nobles of the district, with local interests 
and sympathies, and his office was almost sure to pass on to 
his son. The sheriff was at first merely the king's reeve, or 
bailiff, for the shire, to look after the king's lands there and 
to collect the king's revenues; and until the Norman period 
he was much inferior in power to the ealdorman. 

Ealdorman and bishop together presided over the shire court, 
or shire-moot. This was a survival of the old folk-moot of 
the tribal kingdom.^ It was made up of the landlords of the 
shire and apparently of some of the most important men 
from each hundred and village. In this court the actual 
government of the shire was carried on, and some judicial cases 
were tried. 

1 The first shires originated in this way. But in most of the old Danelagh 
the ancient tribal divisions seem to have been wiped out by Danish rule ; and 
there the successors of Alfred divided the land arbitrarily into shires. 

2 Ancient History, §§ 559, 612. 



§122] ENGLAND — WHAT THE NORMANS FOUND. 135 

120. Hundred and Hundred Court. — Before the tribal king- 
doms sank into shires, they had local divisions of their own, 
under various names. These divisions, or others framed in 
imitation of them, remained as subdivisions of the shire, and 
were known as hundreds. Each hundred had its court, made 
up much like the shire court ; and this busy body was the chief 
unit for the administration of justice. 

121. Townships and Boroughs. — Within the hundred were 
townships, or villages, and perhaps one or more boroughs. A 
few boroughs, like London or Winchester, were important cities 
and capitals ; but most of them at this time were merely 
large and especially protected villages. The township does 
not seem to have had any important powers of self-government. 
So far as we can see, such political powers as its inhabitants 
possessed they must have exercised in the popular courts of 
the shire and hundred. 

122. Anglo-Saxon Feudalism. — The local units had fallen 
to a great degree under the influence of local nobles. Some- 
times a great lord had secured from the king the right to hold 
a private court alongside the popular court of the hundred.^ 
There was a serious lack of effective machinery to secure uni- 
formity in the different shires and to compel obedience to the 
laws of the king and Witan. Moreover, the freemen of the 
villages were sinking somewhat in condition. After Alfred's 
time, it was necessary for each free villager to attach himself to 
some lord. This did not make him unfree in his own eyes or 
in the eyes of the law : it was rather a device to make surer of 
his obedience to the law ; for the lord was made responsible 
for him. But in return the villager made one or more of a 
great variety of payments to the lord, and, in some cases at 
least, his land had begun to pass into the condition of villein 
land on the continent (§ 34, note). 



1 Such grants seem to have been not really grants of jurisdiction, but 
rather grants of fines to be levied in the courts, in return for seeing that the 
proper procedure was carried on. All our knowledge, however, of Anglo- 
Saxon feudalism is vague and unsatisfactory. 



136 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 123 



B. The Norman Period,^ 1066-1154. 

123. General Effect of the Norman Conquest (io66). — The 
Norman Conquest took place in the early part of the reign of 




Battle of Hastings [§ 16], from the Bayeux Tapestry .2 — From Old England. 

Henry IV of Germany, when the Capetian monarchy in France 
was about eighty years old. The strong German kingship was 
just beginning to decline : the French kingship had hardly 



1 It is desirable, of course, that students should read more exteusively on 
English history than on that of other single countries. Source material will 
be found in Lee's Source Book, Colby's Sources, Adams and Stephens' 
Documents, Henderson's Documents ; but probably Hill's Liberty Documents 
contains enough for high schools, and it contains also valuable collections of 
critical comments upon important documents. 

Of modern accounts, Green's English People remains the most attractive 
general history, though it gives undue value to early Saxon institutions and 
ascribes to the Saxons a certain degree of representative government which 
they did not possess. Either Andrews', Terry's, or Gardiner's History of 
England makes a good one-volume text. Advanced students may use Stubbs' 
Constitutional History, and all will find the treatment of Taswell-Langmead 
clear and readable. The volumes that represent the most critical scholarship 
(such as Round's and Pollock and Maitland's) can hardly be used by high 
school students, nor, unhappily, can Medley's shorter and scholarly work. 
Montague's Eleynents is an excellent manual. Freeman's Norman Conquest 
is the great authority for the narrative to William Rufus, and the same 
author's William the Conqueror is an excellent brief study. The opening 
pages of Stubbs' Early Plantagenets, and of Jenks' Edioard I contain admi- 
rable summaries of the Norman period. Traill's Social England may be used 
to good advantage. 

2 The Bayeux Tapestry is a linen band 230 feet long and 20 inches wide, 
embroidered in colors, with seventy-two scenes illustrating the Norman Con- 
quest and the customs of the time. It was a contemporary work. 



~~1 



§123] 



ENGLAND — NORMAN PERIOD, 1066-1154. 



137 



begun to grow. Until this time, England had counted for 
little in the life of Europe. Its church had become almost 
independent of Rome, and in politics its foreign relations had 
been mainly with the Scandinavian countries of the north (§ 16). 
At home, from the time of Alfred the Great, the two chief 
dangers had been the growth of feudal anarchy (§ 122) and the 
splitting apart of Danish 
England and Saxon Eng- 
land (§ 16). 

The ISTorman Conquest 
changed all these condi- 
tions. It brought the 
church again into depend- 
ence on Rome,^ and drew 
England into the thick of 
European politics.^ With- 
in the island, it crushed 
together north and south, 
so that the two parts 
never again dreamed of 
separation, and it built up a strong central government. The 
kings were strong enough to keep down feudal tyrants, but 
not quite strong enough to become royal tyrants themselves. 
Through dread of royal power, nobles and people were drawn 




^ ^ A' 



William the Conqueror and the Con- 
secrated Banner sent by the Pope 
(see footnote 1 below) . — From the 
Bayeux Tapestry. 



1 The ecclesiastical condition was a factor in the conquest. The Pope 
blessed the enterprise and sent Duke William a consecrated banner. After- 
ward, Gregory VII demanded that William do homage to him for his realm. 
William haughtily refused (see his letter to Gregory in Lee, Source Book, 
No. 50). He filled the higli places in the church with Normans in sympathy 
with Rome and with the Cluniac reform, and he developed separate ecclesias- 
tical courts (§ 69), which had not existed before in England ; but he guarded 
jealously against papal interference in his government. He forbade the 
clergy to place any of his knights under excommunication without consulting 
him ; he declared any one an outlaw who should carry an appeal to Rome 
without royal permission ; and no papal letter could be received in England 
without his sanction. 

2 For some generations the rulers of England were also Dukes of Nor- 
mandy, and so great vassals of the French crown. 



138 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§124 



together ^ and became fused into an English, nation, which in 
centuries of slow, quiet, determined progress, won constitu- 
tional liberty. To the old spirit of Saxon freedom, the Normans 
added a neiv genius for organization. The local institutions to 
a considerable degree remained Saxon, but the central govern- 
ment was to owe its efficiency to Norman influences. England 
was the first country in the world to work out for a large 
territory the union of a strong central government and of free 
institutions. 

The conquest also brought in new blood, a higher culture, 
and new elements in language. Norman lords and clergy, and 
likewise Norman merchants and artisans, flocked into England. 
All these people spoke their own Norman-Erench tongue, and 
for a time only the lowest classes spoke English. Gradually, 

however, the English 
was to gain its place as 
the language of the whole 
people ; and meantime 
it was to lose its more 
complicated grammatical, 
forms and to be enriched 
by a multitude of Nor- 
man words. 

124. English Feudal- 
ism. — Eeudalism had 
developed much more 
slowly in England than 
on the continent, and William the Conqueror was able deci- 
sively to influence its subsequent character. He confiscated 
the land of England, with legal formalities, on the ground that 
the holders had been traitors ; then he granted much of it back 
to the old holders on payment of fines, and the rest he gave 




A Norman Ship, from the Bayeux Tapestry. — 
From Old England. (Of. with the remains 
of the Norse boat, page 14.) 



1 The sharp distinction between the Norman and the Saxon had disappeared 
before the close of the Norman reigns (§ 125) . Scott's Ivanhoe pictures a state 
of affairs in this respect which had passed away at least two generations 
before the time dealt with in the story. 



§124] 



ENGLAl^D — NORMAN PERIOD, 1066-1154. 



139 



to his own followers. In all cases he introduced feudal 
tenure : that is, the land was to be held of the king on condi- 
tion of feudal service.^ But with the grants of land the king 
did not grant authority to the lord over his vassals to the extent 
that was customary on 
the continent, feudalism 
was systematized, so far 
as land tenure went, and 
during the next two cen- 
turies the peasantry sank 
into villeinage ; but the 
worst political evils of con- 
tinental feudalism were 
avoided. 

Many checks were in- 
troduced to keep the lords 
from usurping feudal in- 
dependence. (1) No one 
lord was permitted to ac- 
cumulate such vast pos- 
sessions as were often 
held by single barons in 
France and Germany ; 
and properties that the 
great lords did hold were 

scattered in different counties, so that each piece really became 
a surety for the lord's fidelity.^ (2) The chief authority in a 
shire was now exercised, not by an hereditary ealdorman, but 
by the king's sheriif. (3) All freemen were required to swear 
fidelity directly to the king, so that they owed him allegiance 




Norman Doorway, St. Peters, North- 
ampton. — From Old England. (Note 
the massive round arch and the simple 
hut effective ornament.) 



^ Round {Feudal England, 292) shows that prohahly there were not more 
than five thousand knights in the whole of William's feudal army. An old 
legend, helieved until recently, said sixty thousand. 

2 This fortunate arrangement came about prohahly not so much from 
design as from the fact that William really became master of the country 
only by degrees, and so had to reward his followers a little at a time. 



140 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§125 




Silver Penny of William I. 



even against their immediate over-lords. (4) The old national 
militia was preserved, and was put under the command of the 
royal sheriffs, so that the king was not wholly dependent upon 

a feudal army, 

125. The Four "Norman" 

Kings. — William the Con- 
queror (1066-1087) was king 
by right of the sword ; but he 
went through the form of an 
election by an Englisli assem- 
bly, and thereafter he ruled, as 
far as a conqueror could, with 
respect for English customs.^ 
William, by will, left Nor- 
mandy to his eldest son Robert, and England to his second son Willimn 
Bufus (the Red). This prince, to strengthen his claim, procured an elec- 
tion from an English assembly, after the old English fashion ; but he 
proved unscrupulous, though able, and is remembered as a tyrant (1087- 
1100). He was succeeded by his brother, Henry /, the youngest son of 
the conqueror. Henry (1100- 
1135) had been born in Eng- 
land and he married an Eng- 
lish princess. He, also, secured 
the form of an election, and in 
return he granted to the people 
of England a Charter of Liber- 
ties,2 which a hundred years 
later was to become the model 
for a more important grant. 
Henry also began many impor- 
tant reforms in the government, but his work was undone in the anarchy 
of the next reign and had to be reconstructed by his grandson. 

1 Among tlie wise acts of King William was the taking of a great census of 
the kingdom, to determine its resources and the dues payable to the king. 
The results were recorded in the Domesday Book, and are still preserved, so 
that we have more exact knowledge about England at this time than about 
any other country. There seems to have been a population of about twelve 
hundred thousand people. One tenth of them, perhaps, were "burgesses," 
though at least half of these dwelt in what we should call mere villages. 

2 See charter and comments in Hill's Liberty Documents, 1-8. The charter 
is given also in Lee, Colby, and Pennsylvania Reprints, I. 




Silver Penny of Stephen. 



§125] 



ENGLAND— NORMAN PERIOD, 1066-1154. 



141 



The English nobles promised Henry to make his daughter Matilda 
his successor ; but, after his death, his nephew Stephen secured an 
election. Stephen (1135-1154) was weak by nature, and his rule was 
distracted by civil war with the supporters of Matilda. His reign is the 
darkest period in English his- 
tory after the Conquest. Eeudal 
anarchy seemed at last to liave 
seized upon the land. Tlie con- 
temporary chroniclers exclaim 
upon the misery of the age with 
bitter phrases : — 

"Every powerful man made 
his castles, and when they were 
built they filled them with devils 
and evil men ; they put men in 
their dungeons for their gold and 
silver, and tortured them with 
pains unspeakable . . . until men 
said that Christ and his saints 
slept. ... In those days, if 
three or four men came riding 
towards a township, all the 
township fled hastily, believing 
them to be robbers. . . . That 
lasted the nineteen winters Ste- 
phen was king." 




Stephen. From an engraving based 
probably on the coin portraits of his 
reign. — From Andrews' History of 
England. 



Exercise. — The four Norman reigns may be summed up briefly, 
thus : AVilliam I, conquest, consolidation, provision against feudal dis- 
integration ; William II, tyranny ; Henry I, the charter, and beginnings 
of judicial organization ; Stephen, anarchy and civil war. 

Observe that the three successors of William I all had rivals for the 
throne, and so were kept in some measure in dependence upon the 
nation. 

Special Reports. — The Danegeld ; Domesday Book; a fuller story 
of the Norman Conquest, with the harrying of the North ; the making 
of the New Forest ; character of AVilliam I ; further matters of impor- 
tance to be learned for this period from the reading of the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle. 



142 WESTEKN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§126 

C. The Early Planta genets,^ Henry II to Edward II, 
1154-1341. 

(To THE Hundred Years' War.) 

126. Henry II, 1154-1189. — Matilda had married Geoffrey Plan- 
tagenet, Count of Anjou. The son of this marriage, Henry, succeeded 
Stephen, and was the first of a long line of Plantagenet kings. The 
evils of Stephen's time had not lasted long enough to fix themselves upon 
England, and Henry quickly restored peace and good order. His reign 
is further notable for new territorial relations and for new administrative 
and judicial organization (§§ 127-130). 

127. The Territories of the Plantagenets. — Through his 

mother, Henry was duke of iS"ormand.y and Maine, and he held 
also an old and shadowy claim upon Brittany, which he was 
soon able to convert into real lordship. Through his father, he 
was count of Anjou and Touraine. By marriage with the prin- 
cess Eleanor, divorced wife of Louis VII of France (§ 149), he 
obtained Aquitaine, which then included Poitou and Gascony. 
Thus, besides his insular possessions, Henry ruled more than 
half of all Erance, — six or seven times as much territory on the 
continent as was held directly by the Erench king.^ By imper- 
fect conquest, Henry was also " King of Ireland." ^ Eor a time, 
too, he seemed to hold Scotland in subjection ; and the reduction 
of Wales was going on slowly through every strong English reign. 
Probably Henry II w^as the most powerful ruler in Europe. 
He was not strictly an English ruler, and his continental pos- 

1 For source material, see references in note on page 136. The "English 
History by Contemporary AVriters " series (edited by York-Powell) contains 
several valuable volumes, especially. The Misrule of Henry III and Simon 
de Montfort. (The entire series should be in every high school library.) For 
modern accounts, see also page 130. In addition, for special periods: Stubbs' 
Early Plantar) enets ; Mrs. Green's Henry II; Kate Norgate's JoJm Lack- 
land; Jenks' Edward I; and Tout's Edward I. Jessop's Cominci of the 
Friars, .Jusserand's English Wayfarinrj Life, and Cheyney's Industrial and 
Social History are admirable for their special phases of development. 

'•^ See map facing page 165. 

3 Special reports: the conquest of Ireland; the English "Pale" and its 
government. 



§128] 



ENGLAND — HENRY 11, 1154-1189. 



143 



sessions are not to be regarded as English acquisitions. Henry- 
thought of himself as a French prince with some important 
possessions in England and Ireland. None the less, he proved 
one of the greatest and most beneficent of English kings. 

128. The Basis of English "Common Law"; 
Itinerant Courts. — The most important of 
Henry's many reforms concerned the courts.^ 
Until Henry's time the king's court was 
chiefly for causes in which the king or his 
immediate vassals were concerned. The 
great body of men sought justice in the 
decaying courts of the hundred and county 
or in the feudal courts that were growing 
out of these older popular courts. 

If this condition had been allowed to 
continue, each district in England would 
have developed its own local customs (§ 29); 
and the only escape from the ensuing con- 
fusion would have come through the later 
introduction of Eoman Law, with its tend- 
ency toward absolute monarchy (§ 79). 
This was the order of events in continental countries. That 
England followed a different course and gave us her " Common 
Law," we owe largely to the policy of Henry II. His "court" 
widened its functions, and opened its doors to all.^ At the 




Effigy of Henry II, 
from his tomb. — 
From Old England. 



1 Special report : Henry's quarrel with BecTcet over lay and ecclesiastical 
courts; the Constitutions of Clarendon. Cf. § 69. 

2 For one instance, — Henry announced that any free-holder, whose title to 
his land was attacked, should have his case heard in the royal courts. This 
weakened not only the feudal courts, but also the whole basis of feudal feel- 
ing. Henry weakened feudalism still further by encouraging the sub-tenants, ■ 
or vassals of his tenants-in-chief, to pay scutage, or shield money, instead of 
serving personally in war. With the money so collected, the king could raise 
armies superior to the short-termed, undisciplined, feudal levies. But it is 
of more importance to see that the knights were put into the way of ceasing 
to be fighters: they gradually became more interested in managing their 
estates and in political life, and before long we speak of them in this new 
sense, as " knights of the shire." 



144 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 129 

same time, judges of the court were sent out, as itinerant jus- 
tices, to sit in each community at fixed and regular intervals, as 
though the king were present in person. Thus the "customs" 
of the king's court became common law for all England. The 
nation was benefited, and the feudal courts were controlled and 
finally starved out. This bringing impartial justice to every 
man's door was a gift beyond price in the twelfth century, and 
it produced a reverence for the law and for the courts that was 
to become an instinct in the English mind. 

129. Excursus : Administration of Royal Justice in the Middle Ages. 

— In theory the king could always do justice between contending claims ; 
but the difficulty was for the man who suffered from injustice to get at 
the king. The kings of France and Germany depended more upon their 
personal efforts, and less upon organization, than was the case in England. 
They were marvels of energy, and they worked harder than any other 
men of their time ; but they worked at a well-nigh impossible task. 
When Conrad II of Germany (§ 62) was passing in the royal procession 
to his coronation, three low-born persons — a peasant, a widow, and a 
child — pressed through the crowd and called to him for justice. Con- 
rad kept the procession waiting while he heard their troubles and righted 
their wrongs, saying to the bishop who wished him to pass on, " Since I 
have been chosen as a ruler, it is better to do my duty at once ; you have 
often said to me that it was not the hearer, but the doer of the law that 
was blessed." A moment later another man stopped the procession 
with his cries for justice, and, was heard upon the spot. This was the 
way the German and French kings administered justice. Herbert Fisher 
{Medieval Empire, 168) says of the German king, "Instead of organizing 
labor on the great highway that was to lead from chaos to order, he takes 
up the pick and works devotedly, with face to the ground." Royal justice 
was simply what justice the king in person, with the assistance of the 
nobles about him, could get through with in the day, with all the inter- 
ruptions of war, travel, and other business. There was no fixed court, 
and there were 7io regular sessions at different places. To render justice 
was a hard task for the king, and to secure it was impossible for most of 
his subjects.! 

1 This condition made possible the growth of irregular secret tribunals, 
with some of the characteristics of the modern frontier "vigilance com- 
mittee." The most famous of such medieval institutions was the Holy 
Vehme, which appears in Scott's Anne of Geierstein. There is a good 
account in Henderson's Short History of Germany, I, 169-170. 



§130] ENGLAND — HENRY II, 1154-1189. 145 

A like truth held good for France, in large measure, even as late as 
the great Louis IX (about 1250). Joinville's Memoir (of. § 40) gives 
many illustrations. Louis was a justice-loving king, and Joinville de- 
lights to dwell upon the stories of his judgments and the regulation of his 
primitive courts. " Sometimes I have seen him, in order to administer 
justice to his people, come into the garden of Paris dressed in a green 
coat, a surcoat of woolen stuff without sleeves, his hair well combed, and 
a hat, with white peacock feathers, on his head ; carpets were spread, 
and all people who had business to be disposed of stood before him. . . . 
Certain nobles heard every day all pleadings at the gateway of the castle, 
and after mass the king heard all appeals from these decisions in person, 
seated on his bed.i . . . Many a time it happened in summer that he 
would go sit in the wood of Vincennes with his back to an oak, and make 
us take our seats around him. And all who had complaints to make came 
to him without hindrance of ushers. Then he would call a certain noble 
and say, 'Dispose of this case for me '; and when he saw anything to 
amend in the words of those who spoke he would correct it with his own 
lips." Elsewhere, Louis recommends his people to put up with any 
bearable injustice ; and, with unconscious pathos, he admits his inability" 
to secure justice for his subjects, even from his own officers, except in 
extreme cases. 

130. Trial by Jury. — Trial by jury has been looked upon 
for centuries as a chief element in English freedom. This in- 
stitution, also, comes first into notice in the reign of Henry II. 
The jury developed from foreign germs, but its value is due to 
its English growth. It seems to have arisen out of a custom 
of the early Frankish kings. When a dispute occurred as to 
their rights in a given district, they called together a number of 
the oldest and most reliable men to give witness in the matter. 
This form of inquiry, or "inquest," was brought by the Nor- 
mans to England. The Conqueror's of&cers used it in each 
county and district in compiling the Domesday survey (§ 125, 
note) ; and the ignorance of the Norman rulers regarding the 
customs of the land gave frequent occasion for employing it. 

So far, the sworn body of witnesses, or '' jury," had been used 
only to determine matters in which the king was interested. 
Henry II extended the same method to some questions about 

1 This custom gave rise to the expression " bed of justice." 



146 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 131 

property where private individuals were concerned. That is, he 
created a trial jury for civil cases, to replace the old method of 
judicial combat. Under Henry, also, a jury was called in each 
county, at intervals, to " present " suspected criminals for trial. 
This was the origin of our grand jury, or jury of presentment. 
For some time longer, those suspected criminals who were 
"presented" by the "jury of inquest" were tried by "ordeal" 
or by "combat";^ but in 1215 the Lateran Council (§ 82, note) 
condemned the "ordeal," and after that time it became the 
custom in England to summon another, smaller jury (petit 
jury) to try the man whom the larger jury had accused.^ 

131. Richard I (1189-1199) ; John (1199-1216). — Henry II was fol- 
lowed by two sons in succession, Ricliard "tlie Lion Hearted" and John. 
Both were bad and tyrannical rulers. Richard spent only seven months 
of his reign in England, and those months solely for the purpose of getting 
money for his foreign wars. Fortunately he was as careless as he was 
tyrannical ; and so in his desire for money he sold valuable charters to 
many rising towns. He is remembered as the leader of the Third Cru- 
sade (§ 97). England suffered little evil from his neglect, because the 
old officers of his father for the most part remained in charge and contin- 
ued the old system. John was an abler man than his brother, but a more 
despicable character. Three events mark his reign. (1) Abroad he lost 
Normandy and all northern Erance to the French king. (2) After a long 
contest with Pope Innocent III, he was forced to surrender his crown, to 
receive it back again as a papal fief. (3) His oppression finally brought 
all classes of the nation to combine against him, and, in 1215, a general 
rising forced him to sign Magna Carta? 

1 Ancient History, § 608. 

2 The accused still had the right to claim trial by combat. The noble 
classes commonly did so, for some generations; and the practice was not 
legally abolished until 1819, shortly after an attempt had been made to take 
advantage of the obsolete right. Cf. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitu- 
tional History, 5th edition, 103-105. For a long time the trial jury were 
witnesses as well as judges of the testimony. They were allowed, however, 
to call in other witnesses ; and gradually a line was drawn between them and 
these others, until finally it became the rule that the "jurymen" should 
come without any knowledge of their own regarding the case, so as to hear 
and judge impartially the evidence submitted by the witnesses. 

3 Special reports : the story of the rising ; Stephen Langton and his part in 
securing Magna Carta. 



§133] ENGLAND — MAGNA CAETA. 147 

Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel iiiiprisonetur, aut dissaisiatur, aut utlagetur, 
No free man shall be taken, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or ontlawed, 

aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, iiec super eum ibimus oec super 
or banished, or in any ivaij destruyed, nor will ive go upon him nor upon 



m tnU ^ ttjc^lt wi^iToMttw m&m 'Jk fXt^w 



% 



eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terrae. 
him send, except by the Ipgid jndipw'nt of /lis peers or by the law of the land. 

Nulli vendemus, uulli uegabiuius, aut ditl'eremas, rectum aut justiciam. 
To no one will ice sell, to no one will toe deny, or delay, right or justice. 

Sections 39 and 40 of Magna Carta. The bars are facsimiles of the writing 
in the charter, in Latin, of course, with the curious abbreviations of the 
medieval Latin. Below each line is given the Latin in full with a transla- 
tion. — From Andrews' History of England. 

132. Magna Carta is the " first great document in the Bible 
of English Liberties." It was not unusual in the Middle Ages 
for the nobles to secure charters of liberties for themselves 
from their kings. In England, too, the great barons led this 
movement ; but the peculiarity of the Great Charter is (1) that 
in it the barons promised toward their dependents the same 
rights they demanded for themselves from the king; and 
(2) that place was found for special provisions in the interest 
of the townsmen and even of villeins. The Charter became at 
once the standard of freedom, and in the next two centuries, 
English kings were called upon to confirm it no less than 
thirty-eight times ; ^ while, as new needs arose, new meanings 
were read into it (cf. § 134, note 3). 

133. Henry III, 1217-1272. — The long reign of John's son, Henry III, 
saw much disorder and tyranny, and much constitutional progress for 

1 Exercise : a study of Magna Carta. It is printed in all collections of 
documents upon English history (see bibliography, page 136) , but it can be 
consulted best, with a collection of comments, in Hill's Liberty Documents, 
9-32. Five-cent copies can be obtained in the Old South Leaflets. 



148 WESTEEN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 134 

whicli the King deserves no credit. Henry was a pious, frivolous, extrava- 
gant, weak tyrant. In the second half of the reign, the popular party 
found an able champion in the great Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, 
the naost powerful of the English nobles. The struggle ^ became open 
war, and Simon conquered at the Battle of Lewes (1264). Eor a year he 
was really master of England, until his defeat and death at Evesham ^ in 
1265. That year is notable in the history of English freedom (§ 134). 

134. The Beginning of Parliament. — After the Conquest, the 
Saxon Witan had given way to the " Great Council " of the 
Norman kings. In theory, the king ruled with the " advice 
and consent" of this body. In practice, the Council was 
the mere servant of a powerful king. All those who held 
land directly of the king ("tenants-in-chief") had a right 
to be present in this court; but in fact only the great lords 
attended. Magna Carta had provided that no new ''tax"^ 
should be imposed without the consent of the Great Council, 
and had prescribed the method of calling the Council : the 
great barons were to be summoned by letter, individually ; 
the lesser barons, by a general notice read by the sheriffs in 
the county courts. These smaller barons, however, did not 
attend; and in the troubles of the reign of Henry III, on 
two or three occasions, notably in 125 Jf., the sheriffs had been 
directed to see that each county sent knights to the gathering.* 
Thus a representative element had been introduced into the Great 
Council. So far, however, only the landholding aristocracy had 
been concerned. But after the Battle of Lewes, Earl Simon 
seized upon this system of representation and extended it. 
The writs for the famous "Parliament"^ of 1265, issued by 

1 Special report: the Provisions of Oxford, of 1258. 

2 Special report upon this battle ; see Green's English People, I, 303-304. 

8 The charter did not say " tax." Taxation proper had hardly begun. 
The document provided that no feudal aid or scutage (a kind of war tax) 
should be imposed without the consent of tire Council. Later, when taxation 
developed, the nation read the idea of taxes into the document, in place of 
the feudal aids really referred to. 

4 Once, indeed, in John's reign, four knights from each shire had been 
summoned ; but the Assembly seems never to have met. 

6 This name for the national assembly had come into use shortly before. 



§136] ENGLAND — THE COMMONS IN PAELIAMENT. 149 

Simon's direction while the King was in his power, called for 
the attendance of two knights from each shire and also of two 
burgesses from each borough, to sit with the lords and clergy. 
Simon had taken a great step toward changing the Great 
Council of royal vassals into a " Parliament " representing the 
people of England. 

135. The Model Parliament, 1295. — In the years that imme- 
diately followed the great deed of Simon, several national 
assemblies met, wherein towns and counties had some repre- 
sentation ; but the exact form varied from time to time, and 
the powers of -the representatives were slight and indefinite. 
In the " Model Parliament " of 1295, however, Edward I, the 
son of Henry III, adopted Simon's plan of thirty years before : 
each shire and each borough was called .upon to send its two 
representatives, — since, as Edward's writ read, "that which 
touches all should be approved by all." ^ From that time, the 
regular representation of counties and boroughs became a fixed 
principle in the English national assembly. For the first time 
in the world's history, representative government was put upon 
a good working basis. 

136. Lords and Commons. — After a half-century or so. Par- 
liament began to sit in two "houses." The nature of this 
division was not the result of any deliberate plan, but it was 
of immense importance. Edward summoned to his Parliament 
the "three estates," — the clergy, the nobles, and the burgesses. 
The greater nobles and the greater clergy had personal sum- 
mons : the other classes were to be represented by delegates, 
■ — the smaller landholders by the elected "knights of the 
shire," the towns by their chosen burgesses, and the lower 
clergy by elected representatives, one for each district. At 
first, all probably sat together. Had this continued, the 
townsmen would never have secured much voice : they would 
have been frightened and overawed by the nobles. The result 
would have been about as bad if the three estates had come to 

1 Hill's Liberty Documents gives the Summons and modern critical comment. 



150 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 137 

sit separately, as they did in France and Spain : with so many 
distinct orders, an able king could easily have played otf one 
against the other. England again followed a course of its 
own. The inferior clergy, very happily, refixsed to attend 
Parliament, insisting instead upon their right to act in " Con- 
vocation," a purely ecclesiastical assembly. Thus they threw 
away a chance to secure political power. The great spiritual 
lords, with personal summons, were not numerous enough by 
themselves to make an " estate," and so they preferred to sit 
with the great lay lords, not as clergy, but as temporal barons. 
Thus, when the different orders began to sit apart, the great 
peers, lay and spiritual, who were summoned by individual 
letters, made a "House of Lords," while the representative ele- 
ments — knights of the shire and burgesses — came together 
as the " House of Commons."^ 

The three estates had faded into two, and even these two 
were not distinct. For in England, unlike the case upon the 
continent, only the oldest son of a lord succeeded to his father's 
title and nobility and to the right to a personal summons to 
the House of Lords: the younger sons — and even the oldest 
son during his father's life — belonged in the gentry (gentle- 
man) class, and at most were "knights of the shire." As such, 
oftentimes, the son or the brother of an earl sat for his county 
in the House of Commons beside the shopkeeper from the 
town. TJie gentry in the Commons formed a link to hind Lords 
and Commons together, and to preserve good understanding 
between them, so that the two houses upon occasion could act 
in unison in behalf of English liberty. The House of Com- 
mons, from the first, was much more than an " estate/' and it 
was to widen into the representative of the nation. 

137. The First Two Edwards. — Edward I (1272-1307) was the 
greatest of the Plantagenet kings. Apart from his development of Parlia- 

1 The knights were drawn to the lords by social ties ; but they had been in 
the habit of acting with the burgesses in local matters, and, happily, now 
joined with them in the national assembly. 



§139] ENGLAND — THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 151 

ment, his great legal reforms ^ have earned him the title, "the English 
Justinian." His weak son, Edward II (1307-1327), was controlled by 
unworthy favorites, and was finally deposed by Parliament.^ 



D. Period of the "Hundred Years' War/' 1338-1453.3 

138. Reference Table of Reigns. 

a. The Plantagenets, from Edward III to the Lancastrian Branch. 

Edward III, 1327-1377: son of Edward II ; opening of the long war with 

France ; the Black Death ; growth of the Commons. 
Richard II, 1377-1399 : grandson of Edward III ; the peasant revolt oj 

1381 ; attempt at personal rule ; deposition. 

h. The Lancastrians. 

Henry IV, 1399-1413 : Duke of Lancaster and cousin of Richard 11 ; 
elected king by Parliament, after a brief civil war ; recognized de- 
pendence on Parliament ; remarkable growth of the Commons. 

Henry V, 1413-1422 : renewed Hundred Years' War, and conquered France. 

Henry VI, 1422-1461 : loss of France ; throne of England claimed by the 
Duke of York, another descendant of Edward III ; civil war ; Henry 
deposed by his Yorkist conquerors.' 

139. The Hundred Years' War. — Ever since the greatest 
French vassal became king of England, it had been a matter of 
settled policy with the French kings, to undermine the power 
of the English rulers. John and Henry III had lost their 
French possessions north of the Loire, and Poitou to the south 
of that river : England kept only southwest Aquitaine. While 
the English Edwards were trying desperately to conquer Scot- 
land, France continued her policy, by aiding that northern 

1 These reforms are too complicated to treat in this volume, but it may be 
stated that among other results they continued the weakening of feudalism. 

2 In the early Saxon period, the Witan had sometimes deposed a king, but 
this deposition of Edward II was the first instance of the kind after the Nor- 
man Conquest. There were to be other striking cases in English history 
(§§ 143, 242, 250). 

3 See references on pages 136 and 142. Pennsylvania Reprints, II, No. 5, 
deals with the time of Wyclif , and the Paston Letters give graphic views of 
the fifteenth century. See also notes on pages 155 and 157. 



152 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§13& 



kingdom. Therefore, in 1338, Edward III declared open war 
upon France. This was the beginning of the "Hundred 
Years' War," which was to last, with brief truces, until 1453. 
Edward's purpose was largely commercial : he wished to pre- 
serve the trade with Gascony and to secure that of Flanders.. 
To strengthen his position, especially with the Flemish vassals 
of France, Edward set up a somewhat fanciful claim to the 




A Fourteenth Century Bridge in Rural England, near Danby in 
Oxfordshire. — From Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life. 



French crown (§ 148, note), and each English king called him- 
self also " King of France " from that time until 1802. 

The English gained brilliant victories, overran France re- 
peatedly, and brought home much plunder. England was 
prosperous, too, because of her growing commerce. Her people 
felt none of the direct ravages of war, except for the raids of 
French pirates on the coast ; and for a time they bore cheerfully 
the cost of the French campaigns. The two important battles 
in Edward's reign were those of Crecy and Poitiers. At Crecy, 



§139] 



ENGLAND — THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 



153 



in 1346, a small English army, some sixteen thousand strong, 
defeated a French host three times its number. The signifi- 
cance of the battle lay in the fact that in the main it was won 
over the gallantest chivalry in Europe by the peasant bowmen 
who made the bulk of the English force, and that even the 
English horsemen had dismounted and fought on foot as pike- 
men.^ The invincibility of the feudal horseman^ was passing 




Seals of Edward III before and after the assumption of the arms of France. 
On the seal to the right may be noticed the royal fleur-de-lis of France. 



away. The like phenomenon was repeated a few years later at 
Poitiers (1356), where the numbers were seven to one (and 
quite as strikingly, three generations later, at Agincourt). 

These victories bore little fruit. Neither castles nor towns 
opened their gates because of them ; and before the end of 
Edward's reign, by cautious campaigning, the French had 

1 According to one old chronicler, gunpowder was used in this battle : 
the English are said to have had several small "bombards," "which, with 
fire and noise like God's thunder, threw little balls of iron to fric/hten the 
horses " ! 

2 The term " infantry" had been to this time a contemptuous expression, 
from the same word as "infant," applied to the undisciplined mob of boys 
and men who followed the army of horsemen. The English had learned the 
value of infantry just before Crecy, in their defeat by the Scots at Bannock- 
burn. Cf. the earlier example at Legnano, § 80. Special report upon 
Bannockburn. 



154 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§140 



recovered all their territory except a few cities on the coast. 
This was best for the interests of both France and England ; 
but in 1415, after many years of truce, Henry V again invaded 
France, at a moment when the country was distracted by internal 
quarrels, and made himself master of the kingdom. His son, 
Henry VI, a child of nine months, was crowned in Paris as 
" King of France " ; but again the French recovered themselves, 
and by the middle of the fifteenth century, just before the 




An English Carriage of the Fourteenth Century. — After Jasserand's 
English Wayfaring Life ; irom a fourteenth century psalter. This car- 
riage is represented as drawn hy five horses tandem, driven by two postil- 
ions. Such a carriage was a princely luxury, equaling in value a herd of 
from four hundred to sixteen hundred oxen. 



beginning of the civil war in England (§ 145), the English lost 
all France except Calais on the Channel. 

140. The Black Death.' — The happy prosperity in England 
during the early part of the reign of Edward III, received a 
great shock from the Black Death. This was the most famous 
of all the great plagues of history. It had been devastating 
the East for some years ; and in 1348, the year after Crecy, it 
reached England. Almost at a blow, it reduced the population 
of the island at least one-third.^ 



1 For documents and contemporaiy accounts, see Lee, Colby, and Pennsyl- 
vania Reprints, II, No. 5. The best modern account is Gasquet's The Great 
Pestilence. See also Jessopp's Coming of the Friars. 

2 The results were not less terrible upr>n the continent. Some authorities 
estimate that the disease swept away half the population of Western Europe. 



§141] ENGLAND — THE BLACK DEATH. 155 

This terrible loss fell most heavily upon the working classes, 
but in the final result it helped along a great social change for 
their betterment. The lack of laborers was so great that 
wages doubled, and a new and higher standard of living was 
introduced. Parliament, it is true, in the interest of the land- 
lords, tried, by foolish and cruel laws,^ to keep the laborers upon 
the old footing ; but individual landlords were so anxious to 
harvest their standing crops, that they did not venture to take 
advantage of such laws. Instead, they made more and more 
favorable terms with their old serfs, to keep them from running 
off to other districts, and gradually allowed them to exchange 
their labor services for fixed money rents. This amounted to 
a change from serfdom to freedom. 

141. Social Discontent : Desire of the Peasantry for more Rapid 
Improvement ; Wyclif and the Lollard Movement.^ — The change 
was under way even before the coming of the Black Death, 
and it was practically complete before the middle of the 
fifteenth century. That is, the process was spread over a 
century. Rapid as this seems to the student of history, it was 
terribly slow to the laboring population of the time. The 
improvement that had taken place made them doubly impatient 
with the burdens that remained. No doubt, too, there were 
individual cases of bitter hardship, where a lord by legal tricks, 
or by reviving old and almost forgotten claims, or by down- 
right violence, reduced his half-freed villeins to serfdom again. 

There were also other causes, political and religious, for pop- 
ular discontent. In particular the growing wealth and world- 
liness of the church began to attract attention. Chaucer, the 
great English poet of the age, indulged in gentle raillery^ 
toward these features of the religious establishment ; but more 
serious men could not dismiss them so lightly. The great 

1 See Pennsylvania Reprints, II, No. 5, for documents. 

2 Cf. Trevelyan's England in the Age of Wycliffe ; Poole's Wycliffe and 
Movements for Reform ; and Sergeant's Wiclif. 

3 Cf . the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, for the descriptions of the 
monk, the prioress, the friar, and the pardoner. 



156 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 141 

John Wyclif&t Oxford preached strenuously against sucli evils, 
and his most earnest disciples traveled from place to place 
spreading his doctrines through the land.^ 

These "poor preachers" were called "Lollards" (babblers) by their 
enemies. Some of them exaggerated into pure communism their mas- 
ter's teachings against wealth, and called for the abolition of all rank and 
property. John Ball, one of the "mad preachers," wrote words that 
rang through England from shore to shore, — 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman ? " 

"This priest, " says Froissart, a contemporary chronicler, "used often- 
times to go and preach when the people in the villages were coming out 
from mass ; and he would make them gather about him, and would say thus: 
' Good people, things go not well in England, nor will, till everything be 
in common and there no more be villeins and gentlemen. By what right 
are they whom we call lords greater folk than we ? We be all come from 
one father and one mother, Adam and Eve, . . . but they are clothed in 
velvet and are warm in their furs, while we shiver in rags ; they have 
wine, and spices, and fair bread ; and we, oat cake and straw, and water 
to drink ; they dwell in fair houses, and we have the pain and travail, the 
rain and the wind in the fields. Yet from our labor they keep their estate.' 
And so the people would murmur*one with the other in the fields, and in 
the ways as they met together, affirming that John Ball spoke truth." 

1 Wyclif passed on from attacking the abuses in the church to attacking 
its doctrines, and finally took much the position occupied by Luther a century 
and a half later. Indeed, Wyclif lias been called the "Morning Star of the 
Reformation." With his associates, he made the first complete translation 
of the Bible into English; and many copies made by his " iDoor preachers " 
were distributed through the land. Recently, an eminent Roman Catholic 
scholar, Father Gasquet, has advanced the theory that the so-called Wyclif's 
Bible was really an old, authorized Catholic translation ; but this view has 
not met with general acceptance. There is no doubt, however, that, nearly a 
century earlier than Wyclif, friends of Roger Bacon began a critical transla- 
tion from Greek into Latin (cf. Cambridge Modern History, I, 585 ff.)- 

Wyclif was protected, for political reasons, by the Duke of Lancaster, one 
of the sons of Edward III; and all attempts to persecute him failed. Some 
years after his death, however, the Council of Constance (§ 167) condemned 
his doctrines, and his ashes were then disinterred and cast into the river 
Swift. The Lancastrian kings, Henry IV and Henry V, persecuted the Lol- 
lards, and the sect soon disappeared from sight, but it may have had con- 
siderable influence upon the later English Protestant movement. 



§142] ENGLAND — THE END OF VILLEINAGE. 157 

142. The Peasant Rising of 1381:^ Disappearance of Villeinage. 

— Thus the material was ready for a conflagration. While 
things were in this state, Parliament passed a heavy poll tax, 
bearing with unfair weight on the poor of the realm. With 
amazing suddenness and unanimity, the peasantry rose in 
arms. Eroni all sides they marched upon London, and in a 
few days the kingdom was virtually in their hands. Their 
special demand was that all labor rents should be exchanged 
for fixed money rents ; and they offered a fair rent, as prices 
then were. The strangest thing about the rising was the 
self-restraint shown by the peasants. The various bands 
sacked some buildings of the gentry class, — destroying 
especially the " manor rolls," or the written evidence of 
services due from villeins on an estate, — and they put to 
death a few lawyers and nobles. But women and children 
were not injured, and there was no attempt at general 
pillage and murder, such as usually mark servile insurrections 
and such as characterized the frightful risings of the peasantry 
in France in the same century. The French "Jacquerie"^ 
was an outburst of blind, brute rage, upon the part of hopeless 
creatures, goaded past all endurance, seeking only to glut their 
vengeance. The English peasants stood upon a higher plane 
of comfort and of civilization, and their revolt was marked 
relatively by the moderation of men who had a definite pro- 
gram for social reform. 

Unfortunately, the peasants lacked the organization needful 
to secure the results of their temporary success. Their leader, 
Wat the Tyler, was murdered treacherously in a conference, and 
his followers were persuaded to go home under written guar- 
antee from the King that all their demands should be granted, 
together with free pardon for the revolt. When they had 

1 Ashley's Edward III and His Wars ; Powell's Peasant Rising ; Kriehn's 
" Studies in the Sources of the Social Eevolt" {American Historical Review, 
VII, Nos. 2 and 3) ; and Trevelyan's Age of Wycliffe. 

2 " Jacques " is the general French name for a peasant. A vivid picture 
of a local rising in France is given in Conan Doyle's White Company. 



158 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 143 

dispersed, the property classes rallied and exacted a bloody 
and treacherous vengeance.^ 

In a short time, however, the movement toward emancipation 
began again with renewed force. We cannot be sure whether 
the revolt hastened or hindered the change.^ Probably it did 
not very much affect the movement, except for a brief time ; 
and it is best regarded as an unwise but very natural attempt 
to secure at a stroke the good results which were coming more 
surely by slow, peaceful development. In any event, except 
for isolated cases villeinage had passed avMy frmn England 
hefore the Wars of the Roses (§ 145). 

143. The Growth of Parliament. — The French war made it 
necessary for Edward III and his successors to ask Parliament 
for frequent grants of money. The towns were growing wealthy 
and were able to supply the money : indeed the English success 
was due to this middle-class wealth as much, perhaps, as to the 
long-bow of the yeomanry. But Parliament took advantage 
of the needs of the King to secure gradual extensions of power. 
(1) It became an established principle that "redress of griev- 
ances " must precede a " grant of supply." (2) In the closing 
years of Edward III, the Good Parliament (1376) " impeached " 
the King's ministers, using the same method that has ever 
since been used for such purposes in English-speaking coun- 
tries. (3) When Eichard 11^ attempted a "personal" rule, 
without regard to Parliament, he was deposed (1399), and a 

1 Parliament refused to keep any of the pledges that the King had made, 
and told him he could not grant away the services due them, — their property, 
— without their consent. 

2 The older view was that the Peasant Revolt came because the landlords 
were trying to make the condition of the peasants worse than before ; but the 
new view, presented in the text, is now clearly established. The discussions 
are generally too technical for high school students. An excellent statement 
of the present view is given in Cheyney's Industrial and Social Histonj, 
103-133 ; and page 120 gives a copy of the royal charters which were carried 
home by the peasantry to every village and which were afterward so cruelly 
disregarded. 

3 Edward's oldest son, the Black Prince, had died before his father; so 
Edward was succeeded by his grandson Richard. 



§143] 



ENGLAND — GROWTH OF PARLIAMENT. 



159 



cousin was elected king in his place. (4) This sovereign, 
Henry IV (Henry of Lancaster), frankly recognized his de- 
pendence on Parliament. Under him the lower house made 
good its claims that all money bills must originate with it^ 
and that it should audit the expenditures (1407) ; (5) it se- 
cured the right to judge of the election of its own members, 




Parliament of 1399, which deposed Richard IL — From Old England, 
which follows a contemporary manuscript. (The faces seem to be portraits.) 

and (6) it compelled the King to dismiss his ministers and 
appoint new ones satisfactory to Parliament ; (7) freedom of 
speech in Parliament and freedom from arrest, except by the 
order of Parliament itself, became recognized privileges of all 
members ; (8) on three different occasions during Henry's 
reign. Parliament passed acts fixing the succession to the 
throne. (9) Under the next sovereign, Henry V, the older 
form of petitions to the king to make laws was chailged, 
so that Parliament passed " bills," which the king had to 
accept or reject, and the wording of which he could not 
change without reference back to Parliament (1414). 



1 This has been the practice in English-speaking legislatures ever since. 



160 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 144 

144. The *' Liberties of Englishmen." — Thus under the Lan- 
castrians there was established in the breasts of Englishmen 
a proud consciousness of English Liberty as a most precious 
inheritance. With right they believed it superior to that 
possessed by any other people of the time. As Duruy remarks 
{Middle Ages, 436), '' In the middle of the fifteenth century, 
the English people had in Magna Carta a declaration of their 
rights, in the jury a guarantee for their safety as individuals, 
and in Parliament a guarantee for national liberty." No man 
could be arrested except by order of a magistrate (not simply 
on the king's order) ; when arrested, he was entitled to speedy 
trial ; and he could be condemned only by twelve men of his 
own neighborhood. Parliament voted taxes and superintended 
their expenditure, settled the succession to the throne, im- 
peached offensive officers, and, upon occasion, deposed a king; 
and no law could be made or changed without its consent. 

Sir John Eortescue, Chief Justice under Henry VI, wrote a book, In 
Praise of the Laws of England, for the instruction of Henry's son. The 
volume explains the English kingship in these words : — 

"A king of England at his pleasure can not make any alteration in the 
laws of the land without the consent of his subjects, nor burden them 
against their wills with strange impositions. . . . Rejoice therefore, my 
good Prince, that such is the law of the kingdom you are to inherit, be- 
cause it will afford both to you and to your subjects the greatest security 
and satisfaction. . . . [The King] is appointed to protect his subjects in 
their lives, properties, and laws ; for this end 1ie has the delegation of 
power from the people, and he has no just claims to any other power but 
this." 

Some of the privileges of Parliament were soon lost (§ 147), 
it is true ; and it must be understood, too, that the courts 
remained dependent upon the crown and often proved shame- 
fully subservient to its will. Still, the liberties won in the 
Lancastrian period were of mighty importance both in their 
own day and in their influence upon future times. An ideal 
of free government had been established, toward which, cen- 
turies later, men were to struggle (§§ 237 ff.). 



§145] ENGLAND — WARS OF THE ROSES. 161 

E. The Wars of the Eoses and the Yorkist Kings,^ 
1454-1485. 

145. The Civil War. — la 1422, Henry VI became king, while 
less than a year old. The long minority gave time for factions 
to grow among the nobles; and when Henry assumed the 
government, he proved too weak and gentle to restore order. 
The misrule of the great lords caused widespread discontent, 
especially among the rising towns,^ whose industries called 
for settled government; and, encouraged by this discontent, 
the Duke of York came forward to claim the crown. 

Thus began the Wars of the Roses,^ to last from 1454 to 1471. 
York was descended from a son of Edward III older than the 
one through whom the Lancastrians derived their claim to the 
throne ; and the war, the most ruthless and bloody in English 
history since Danish times, was largely a selfish contest between 
great nobles. At the same time the chief significance of the 
struggle is in the fact that the Lancastrian strength lay in 
the feudal nobility of the north of England, while York 
was supported by the. new middle class of the towns in the 
south. 

Finally, York and the cause of the towns conquered. The 
Lancastrian family, with most of the great nobles of both 
parties, had been exterminated in battle or by assassination. 
The townsmen, however, could not dream of grasping political 
power; they wanted only protection. The political fruits of 
the victory fell to the new monarchy (§ 146). 

1 Gairdner's Lancaster and York is the best brief volume on this period. 
See also references on pages 136 and 142. Stubbs' great history just goes 
through the period. Stevenson's Blade Arrow is an admirable story for a 
boy, and Bulwer's Last of the Barons is the most famous novel dealing with 
the age. 

2 Special topic : Cade's Rebellion. (The student must get the view of 
recent scholars and not be content with the slanders of the old writers.) 

3 The Yorkists assumed a white rose as their badge; the Lancastrians, a 
red rose. Students may be asked to find the scene in which Shakspere 
represents the choice of these symbols. 



162 WESTEKN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 146 

146. Reference Table of the Yorkist Reigns. 

Edward IV, 1461-1483 : neglected Parliament. 

Edward V, 1483 : a child ; never crowned ; son of Edward IV ; mur- 
dered by his uncle, the regent, who became king. 

Richard III, 1483-1485 : a cruel tyrant, soon overthrown by a popular 
rising led by Henry Tudor, a connection of the Lancastrian line, who 
became king as Henry VII. 

147. Results of the Civil War : Decline of Parliament ; a " New 
Monarchy." — The losses in the war had fallen in the main on 
the feudal classes. The old nobility vt^as almost swept away, 
and the following Yorkist and Tudor kings set to work skill- 
fully to crush whatever feudal independence remained. A new 
nobility was created, but it was dependent upon the king. The 
towns continued to grow in importance, but this did not mean 
a growth in political freedom. Without nobles for leaders, the 
towns and country gentlemen w^ere still too weak to challenge 
the royal power. 

Parliament lost authority and sank to insignificance. During 
the long war it had not been possible to hold true Parliaments. 
When the wars were over, the kings were so enriched by con- 
fiscations, that in ordinary times they could rule without new 
taxes, and so could get along for long periods without calling 
a Parliament. This policy was deliberately adopted, except 
when the king was confident that he could easily use Parlia- 
ment as his tool. England entered the sixteenth century under 
the Tudor monarchs, Henry VII and his son Henry VIII, 
with a "New Monarchy," — a strong government, absolute in 
practice, though still following old constitutional forms. The 
occasional meetings of Parliament preserved these forms; but 
not for two hundred years was Parliament to play as large a 
part in the government as it had done in the century before 
the civil war. After all, however, the New Monarchy, in 
crushing the feudal forces, was preparing the way for a future 
parliamentary government infinitely more valuable than men 
had dreamed of in earlier times. 



§149] FRANCE — CAPETIAN KINGS. 163 

IV. EUROPE BY SEPARATE STATES: ERANCE. 

There is no other' modern nation which owes so heavy a debt of gratitude 
to its ancient line of kings as the French. France, as it exists to-day, and 
has existed through all modern history, with all its glorious achievements, 
is their creation and that of no one else. — George Burton Adams. 

148. Reference Table : Capetian Kings to 1547, with Accession Dates. 



Philip V 1316 

Charles IV 1322 

Philip VI (Valois)i . . . 1328 

John 1350 

Charles V (the Wise) . . . 1364 

Charles VI 1380 

Charles VII 1422 

Louis X/ ...... . 1461 

Charles VIII 1483 

Louis XII . . . . . . . 1498 

ErancisI ..... 1515-1547 



Hugh Capet 987 

Robert II 996 

Henry I 1031 

Philip I . 1060 

Louis VI 1108 

Louis VII 1137 

Philip II (Augustus) . . . 1180 

Louis VIII 1223 

Louis IX (the Saint) . . . 1226 

Philip III 1270 

PMip iF (the Pair) . . . 1285 

Louis X ....... 1314 

149. The Most Important Reigns.^ — The real growth of Erance 
begins with the fifth Capetian, Louis VI. Tliis King consolidated 
the hereditary Capetian duchy, the " Isle of France," by bring- 
ing his vassals into closer dependence upon himself, and so 
forged the weapon with which his successors were to consolidate 
all France. The " Isle of France " lay in the north-central part of 
the kingdom, remote from the sea, and comprised about a twelfth 
of French territory. The other parts were ruled by ten or twelve 

i The first fourteen of these rulers came to the throne in the " direct line." 
Until Philip IV, the succession was always from father to oldest son. The 
last three of the fourteen were all sons of Philip IV, and all three died with- 
out male heirs. The crown then passed to their oldest cousin, a grandson of 
Philip III. This prince (Philip VI) had been Count of Valois, and his succes- 
sors are known as the House of Valois. The death of the sons of Philip IV 
without a male heir was the occasion for the claim advanced by Edward III 
of England (§ 139): Edward's mother was a younger sister of these three 
kings. French law, however, did not recognize inheritance of the crown 
through females ; and, if it had, Edward's claim would have been worthless, 
since the oldest son of Philip IV had left a daughter who had a male heir, and 
this claim would have preceded that of Edward's mother. 

2 At this point the student should re-read carefully §§ 42-44, for the nature 
and aims of the early Capetian monarchy. 



164 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 150 

great princes, who were vassals of the Capetians only in name. 
Louis VI did not add any of these territories permanently to the 
crown ; but he prepared the way for their gradual acquisition.^ 
In the next four centuries, the five kings who had most to 
do in this great task were Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, Philip 
the Fair, Charles the Wise, and Louis XL Before the death of 
the third of these five, — about 1300, when the four centuries 
were half gone, — the greater part of France had been united 
and the king had become stronger than all the other forces in 
the state. While the German kings were wasting their earlier 
strength in pursuit of impossible universal sovereignty, and 
while the English kings were beginning to share with Parlia- 
ment the absolute power they had for a time possessed from 
conquest, the French kings were adding domain to domain and 
authority to authority, until they became the most absolute 
and powerful sovereigns in Euroj)e. 

150. Territorial Growth. — The making of France, territori- 
ally, consisted in adding the great feudal fiefs (§ 41) directly 
to the royal domain. In the eleventh century a duke of Nor- 
mandy or of Aquitaine was as powerful as the king of France. 
But if the king himself could step into the place of such a 
duke, then the minor lords in Normandy or Aquitaine became 
his direct vassals and added to his power, instead of possibly 
adding to the weight of a rival. By marriage, by forfeiture, 
by war, the kings did themselves replace, one by one, the feudal 
princes. The striking advances came in connection (1) with the 
crusades (§ 105), (2) with the wars against the English kings, 
(3) with the crushing of the Albigenses, and (4) with the seizure 
of the dukedom of Burgundy (§§ 151, 152). 

151. Acquisition of the French Domains of the Plantagenets. — 
Duke William of Normandy, even before he became William 
the Conqueror of England, was the chief rival of his liege, 

1 Louis VI did arrange a marriage for his son with Eleanor, heiress of Aqui- 
taine, the largest of the French principalities ; but the impolitic Louis VII, 
offended by Eleanor's conduct, secured a divorce. Eleanor at once married 
Henry Plantagenet (§ 126), and Aquitaine passed into English hands. 





CHANNEL IS, 













ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 
1154-1453. 



SCALE OF MILES 



50 100 200 300 400 500 GOO 



Limit of the French Kingdom 

Possessions of Plantagenet Kings 

Lands of the French Kings 

Independent Fiefs in France 

Territory of Charles the Bold of Burgundy __ 



§151] FRANCE — CONSOLIDATION OF TERRITORY, 165 

the king of France, Henry II of England ruled directly six 
or seven times as much territory in France as did Philip 
Augustus at the opening of his reign ; and as late as this date 
(1180) " France " proper was still without a seaport. Under 
such conditions it was natural that the French kings should 
strive ceaselessly to stir up enemies for these great rival vas- 
sals and should seize every pretext to weaken them by war.^ 
Through the folly and crimes of John of England (§ 131), 
Philip Augustus was able to declare John's fiefs in France for- 
feited and to enforce the forfeiture of a great part of them, — 
the northwest quarter of France. In this way, Normandy, Maine, 
Anjou, Touraine, and Poiton Avere added to the French crown, 
quadrupling the direct domain of the king, and giving him 
ports on both the Channel and the Atlantic, A century later, 
the persistent policy of the French kings brought on the 
Hundred Years' War with England (§ 139). That war falls 
into two great chapters. The first lasts until the time of 
Richard II in England. In the beginning, the English seemed 
completely victorious ; but Charles the Wise taught the French 
to avoid pitched battles and to conquer by slow campaigns, 
and before 1400 the invaders were driven from all but a few 
ports on the coast. Southivestern France had now been added to 
the royal domain, and the realm had been again nearly doubled. 
To be sure, in a later period of the war, Henry V conquered 
the insane French king, Charles VI, and secured a treaty under 
which the English babe, Henry VI, was crov/ned at Paris as 
King of France ; but the triumph was brief. French national 
feeling had come into being, as a result of the long struggle 
with the foreigner ; and soon the devotion of an heroic peasant 
girl, Joan of Arc, freed her country.^ 

1 Until the time of tlie unprovoked attack upon France by Henry V 
(§ 139), all the struggles with the English kings were really begun by France. 
Such war was not defensive war, but at least it was waged in the interest of 
national consolidation and order. Lasting peace was not possible while the 
realm was so fantastically cut up into opposing states. 

2 Special report : life and work of Joan of Arc. Read Oliphant's Jeanne 
d'Ai'c and Clemens' Personal Reminiscences of Joan of Arc (a novel). 



166 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 152 

Joan saw visions and believed that divine voices called her to her mis- 
sion. That mission was, in truth, to give voice to the new national con- 
sciousness. Her enthusiasm was the prelude to a national uprising, 
before which the few invaders were swept away like chaff. Says 
Lavisse {General Vieio, 64), French patriotism "blossomed in Joan of 
Arc and sanctified itself with the perfume of a miracle." 

France emerged from the struggle after tremendous economic 
loss, and after long periods of terrible suffering and desolation/ 
but with consolidated territory, with a new popular patriotism, 
and with a strengthened government. 

152. Acquisition of the Southeast and the Northeast. — About 
1200, shortly before England's loss of French territory began, 
came the movement that paved the way for the acquisition of 
the principality of Toulouse ; and, soon after the "Hundred 
Years' War closed, Burgundy became French. 

a. The Crusades against the Alhigenses (§ 83) broke the power 
of the count of Toulouse, and left the way open for the kings 
to seize upon this corner of the French realm, piece by piece. 
From the days of Clovis until these crusades, southeastern 
Roman Gaul had really been independent of northern Teutonic 
Gaul.^ Now the feudal North conquered the city South ; but 
the monarchy reaped the benefit of the victory. At last the 
Capetians had won their way to the Mediterranean. 

h. The duchy of Burgundy had been separated from the 
kingdom of Burgundy since the Treaty of Verdun (§ 8), It 
was in name a French province, but its rulers had aided 
England in the Hundred Years' War, in order to weaken the 
French kings and so better to preserve their own independence. 
Little by little, a series of able dukes had built up a composite 
state of wealthy provinces, — some of them fiefs of the Empire, 
some of France.^ During the Wars of the Roses in England, 
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was working zealously 
to weld his group of provinces into a kingdom and to persuade 
the Emperor to change the ducal title to the name of "king." 

1 The first period of the war was the time of the Jacquerie (§ 142). 

2 Ancient History, §§ 590, 616, 618, 619. » See map following page 172. 



§154] FRANCE — ADMINISTRATIVE DEVELOPMENT. 

Success would have restored the old Middle Kingdom of ^^.y^- 
lingian days. For a time Charles seemed about to achieve his 
aim, despite the crafty intrigues of Louis XI of France; but 
in 1477 he was defeated and slain by the Swiss, whom he was 
trying to force into his growing state. He left no male heir, 
and the unscrupulous Louis at once seized Burgundy. The 
rich Flemish towns, it is true, escaped the French grasp, though 
they had been part of Burgundy (§ 162) ; but Louis found com- 
pensation by securing Provence, which Charles had hoped to 
add to his dukedom. 

153. Administrative Development. — As the kings acquired 
the soil of France, step by step, the realm outgrew the simple 
feudal government. The kings then had to create new admin- 
istrative machinery. Philip Augustus (about 1200) made a 
beginning by dividing the growing domain into districts and 
putting each imder a royal officer. Louis IX (about 1250) 
greatly reduced the power of the feudal barons, by insisting 
rigidly on all the ancient rights of the crown. Philip the Fair 
(about 1300) introduced various new checks upon feudal rights 
and established a modern system of national taxation. At 
various times the feudal nobility made desperate attempts to 
regain their waning independence. They had risen in arms in 
formidable leagues at the openings of the reigns of Louis VIII 
and Louis IX, and they made another desperate attempt when 
Louis XI came to the throne. The young King fought val- 
iantly in the field, but really won his victories by cunning 
and unscrupulous diplomacy. Afterward he chose his chief 
ministers from men of low birth, who necessarily remained 
wholly dependent upon royal favor, and before his death the 
feudal lords were reduced to complete dependence. 

154. The Estates General. — Philip the Fair had completed 
his reforms by adding representatives of the towns to the nobles 
and clergy in the Great Council of France. This brought to- 
gether all three " estates " ; and the gathering was called the 
Estates General, to distinguish it from smaller gatherings in 
the separate provinces. The first meeting in this form was 



168 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§155 

held in 1302, only a few j'-ears after the " Model Parliament " 
in England (§ 135). Philip used the Estates General as a con- 
venient taxing-machine. It never became a governing body, 
as the English Parliament did. The kings assembled it only 
when they chose, and easily controlled it. When they no 
longer needed it, the meetings grew rarer, and finally ceased. 

For Further Reading. — Source material : Froissart's Chronicles; 
Commines' Memoirs (1464-1498). 

Modern accounts : Adams' Growth of the French Nation is the best 
brief account, and quite as full as can be used with profit at this point. 
The same author has a shorter survey in his Civilization, ch. xiii. Lodge's 
Close of the Middle Ages, ch. xvi, is particularly good. Excellent treat- 
ments are given in Mutton's Philip Augustus, Smith's The Troubadours, 
and Lodge's Charles the Bold. 

Fiction : Scott's Anne of Geierstein and Quentin Durward both treat 
of the time of Louis XI and Charles the Bold. Hale's In His Name is a 
story of the Albigenses, no doubt idealizing that sect. Conan Doyle's 
White Company (referred to on page 157) is deserving of mention under 
the head of France also ; and Charles Reade's Cloister and Hearth has 
great value. 

Special Reports. — 1. The Battle of Cr^cy. 2. The Battle of 

Poitiers. 3. The English long-bow and the art of war (Oman, Art of 
War, chs. vii, vili). 4. The Battle of Bou vines (1214), and its effects 
upon France, England, and Germany. 



V. EUROPE BY SEPARATE STATES: SPAIN. 

155. Territorial Growth. — Until the Moorish conquest in 
711, the fate of Spain for some centuries had been not unlike 
that of Gaul or Italy, and certainly not less promising. The 
Mohammedan invasion, however, separated the course of de- 
velopment in Spain from that of the rest of Europe; and for 
centuries afterward "Africa began at the Pyrenees." 

The wave of Moorish invasion had left unconquered a few 
resolute Christian chiefs in the remote fastnesses of the north- 
western mountains, and Charlemagne recovered part, also, of 
the northeast. In these districts (Asturia and the Spanish 




SPANISH KINGDOMS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 



§ 156] SPAIN. 169 

March), several little Christian principalities arose, to begin 
the long task of winning back their land, crag by crag and 
stream by stream. This they accomplished in eight hundred 
years of war, — a war at once patriotic and religious, Spaniard 
against African, and Christian against Infidel. The long 
struggle left the Spanish race proud, brave, warlike, unfitted 
for industrial civilization, intensely patriotic, and blindly 
devoted to the church. 

During the eight centuries of conflict, the Christian states 
spread gradually to the south and east, — waxing, fusing, 
splitting up into new states, uniting in kaleidoscopic com- 
binations by marriage and war, — until, before 1400, they had 
combined into three countries, Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. 
Nearly a century later, two of these were united by the mar- 
riage of Isabella of Castile with Ferdinand of Aragon; and 
in 1492 their combined power captured Granada, the last 
Moorish stronghold. Thus, in the year that Columbus dis- 
covered America under Spanish auspices, Spain at home had 
achieved national union and national independence, and she 
soon took her place (with her new-world dependencies) as the 
most powerful European state. 

156. Growth of Monarchic Government. — The feudal lords of 
the many Spanish kingdoms had been the most turbulent and 
uncontrollable in Europe. In each petty state they elected 
their king and took the oath to obey him, in forms like this : 
" We, who are each of us as good as thou, and who together 
are far more powerful than thou, swear to obey thee if thou 
dost obey our laws, and if not, not." The towns of Spain, too, 
had possessed charters of liberties of the most extreme charac- 
ter, and in various kingdoms they had sent representatives to 
the national assembly of Estates, or the " Cortes," for more 
than a century before a like practice began in England. But 
Ferdinand of Aragon began to abridge all these privileges, 
and in the next two reigns (§§ 170, 209 ff.) the process was 
carried so far that Spain became the most absolute monarchy 
in Europe. 



170 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§157 

Map Exercise. — "Castile" was at first merely a line of "castles." 
It was a "mark state" (cf. Ancient History, § 276, and note) : it shut 
off Aragon on one side and Leon on the other from any effective contact 
with the Moors, as Barcelona, Navarre, and Asturia had been shut off 
still earlier. After this was accomplished, Castile was the state most 
likely to grow to supremacy. Cf. Wessex in Britain ; § 16. 

EoR Further Reading. — Tout, Empire and Papacy, ch. xx ; Lodge, 
Middle Ages, ch. xx ; Watts, Christian Becovery of Spain. 

Special Report. — The Cid ; see Clarke, Tlie Cid. 



VL EUROPE BY SEPARATE STATES: SCANDINAVIA. 

157. Soon after the year 800, Norse adventurers began to 
found small states, almost at will, on the fringes of Western 
Europe (§§ 14 ff.), and before the close of the century the 
Scandinavian lands themselves entered the political map of 
Europe as crude kingdoms. After that tim.e, however, except 
for the brief empire of Kuut (§§ 17, 64), they hardly touched 
the life of the rest of Europe until the seventeenth century. 
Within the peninsulas, feudalism was gradually introduced, 
though its hold upon Norway was never firm. The story of 
these northern lands is romantic: the very names of the Norse 
kings make a portrait gallery, — Eric Broadax, Hakon the 
Good, Hakon the Old, Olaf the Thickset, Olaf the Saint.^ 
But after all, the history for the most part is only a record of 
meaningless wars, until, in 1397, the three kingdoms were united 
under Queen Margaret of Denmark, by the Union of Calmar. 

This treaty had the form of a brief written constitution, 
signed by the principal men of the three nations. It provided 
that each country should keep its own laws and its internal 
administration, but that for foreign affairs the three should be 
joined in "perpetual union" under one hereditary sovereign. 
In practice, the "Union" made the states of the northern 
peninsula into dependencies of Denmark. Sweden soon re- 
belled, and finally, under her heroic Gustavus Vasa, established 

1 High school students will enjoy Carlyle's Kinr/s of Norway. 



§ 158J GERMANY. 171 

her independence (1537). Norway became a mere province of 
Denmark, to remain so, with occasional rebellions, until 1814. 



VII. EUKOPE BY SEPARATE STATES: GERMANY. 

^^ From the middle of the thirteenth century, Germany was merely an 
anarchical federation of principalities and republics. There loas no 
longer any collective national life, no national army, finance, or judiciary. 
Everywhere xoar prevailed, and there was no longer any law save that 
of the fist. . . . 

" Over this disorder a monarch presided who still called himself Emperor. 
But, under the trappings of his title, he was only a petty German prince, 
exploiting his high office to make the fortune of his house. Thus the 
Luxemburgs, poor squires of the county of Ardennes, and the Hapsburgs, 
small seigneurs of the county of Argovia, secured a family domain.''^ — • 
Lavisse, Political History of Europe, 40. 

158. Rudolph of Hapsburg, 1273-1291. — The Holy Eoman 
Empire never recovered from the failure of the Hohenstaufen 
princes (§ 88). During the twenty years of interregnum 
(1254-1273), "robber barons" had harassed the land, and iji 
many parts of the country each, lord of a single tower had 
become practically a sovereign prince. Says Bryce, "These 
petty tyrants, whose boast was that they owed fealty only to 
God and the Emperor, showed themselves in practice equally 
regardless of both powers." 

This anarchy was only slightly checked in 1273 by the 
election of Rudolph of Hapsburg as Emperor. Eudolph was 
a petty count of a rude district near the Alps, and no doubt 
the princes chose him because they did not fear his power. 
One of them, the King of Bohemia, refused to acknowledge 
him. Rudolph attacked Bohemia, and seized from it the 
duchy of Austria, which has ever since been the chief seat 
of the Hapsburgs. He completely abandoned the Italian 
policy of the earlier emperors ; and throughout his reign he 
displayed much zeal in widening the boundaries of his personal 
domain. " Sit firm on Thy throne, Lord," once prayed the 
Bishop of Basel, " or the Count of Hapsburg will shove Thee 



172 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§159 

off." Rudolph gave much energy also to the restoration of 
order, so far as that task lay within his power. Along the 
Rhine alone, he demolished over one hundred and forty robber 
castles, and he once hung twenty -nine robbers at one execution. 

159. The Electoral College and the Golden Bull. — At Rudolph's 
death the Electors refused to give the imperial crown to his 
son, though that prince was thoroughly capable ; and the next 
fifty-five years saw five rulers each of a different house from his 
predecessor. The method of electing an emperor had varied 
greatly at different periods. On some occasions, a gathering 
of great nobles had made the choice in a fairly j)opular way, 
while at other times a few princes had settled the matter by 
private negotiation (§ 62, note). Before the end of the Hohen- 
staufen period, the right of election had fallen, to a ring of 
seven princes. These " Electors " now passed the crown from 
family to family, and, at each new election, enriched them- 
selves through extortionate demands upon the candidates. 

To prevent such scandals and the dangerous disputes over 
membership in the electoral college, a Bohemian Emperor, 
Charles IV, with the consent of a Diet,^ issued the Golden 
Bull (1366).^ This document remained the fundamental law 
of the Empire through the rest of its history. It defined 
exactly the powers and procedure of the " college of Electors " 
and defined the members as the three Archbishops of Mainz, 
Cologne, and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, 

1 The Great Council of German lords was known as a " Diet." To this 
gathering, representatives of the free cities were admitted in the fourteenth 
century (as had been the case earlier in the French Estates General, the Eng- 
lish Parliament, and the Spanish Cortes). The Diet came to consist of three 
houses, — the Chamber of Electors, the Chamber of Princes (the greater 
nobles of the second rank), and the Chamber of City Representatives. The 
Diet could do nothing but pass resolutions, which nobody obeyed unless he 
chose to do so. The knights were not admitted, either in person or by repre- 
sentatives. 

2 So called from its gold seal, or bulla. (This word explains the term 
"bull" applied to papal documents.) For a brief special report on the 
Golden Bull, see Henderson, Short History of Germany, 1, 159-162, or Bryce, 
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§ 160] GERMANY. ITS 

the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Count Palatine of the 
Rhine. 

160. The ••Hapsburg" Empire. — Finally, in 1438, after a 
long line of Bohemian emperors, the imperial title came back 
to the Hapsburgs by the election of Albert, Duke of Austria. 
From this time to its disappearance in 1806, the title was to 
belong to the house of Austria, practically as an hereditary 
possession. The form of an election was always gone through, 
but the choice invariably fell upon the Hapsburg heir.^ 

The Empire after 1438 is sometimes called the "Austrian Empire" 
(cf. § 55). The phrase is not strictly correct, but it is significant. The 
emperor was little more than the honorary president of a loose confeder- 
acy made up of a multitude of petty' sovereignties ; and Austria did 
furnish such physical support as the imperial dignity possessed. From 
this time until the French Revolution, with rare exceptions (like Maxi- 
milian), the emperors spent their entire reigns within their Austrian 
domains, busying themselves exclusively with Austrian interests. 

Albert was followed by the long but uninteresting reign of 
Freclerick III (1440-1493), and then the crown passed to 
Maximilian I (1493-1519), the romantic hero of the Hapsburg 
race. Maximilian made a noble effort to reconstruct the Em- 
pire in the interest of order and good government, and so to 
bring Germany abreast of England, France, and Spain ; but in 
the end he failed utterly, because of the selfishness of the 
nobles and the local jealousies between the provinces, and, 
it must be added, because of his own dreamy nature and 
haughty willfulness. 

In the person of Maximilian's grandson, Charles V, the 
houses of Austria and Spain were united (§ 172), so introduc- 
ing a new chapter in the history of Eiirope. 

For Further Reading. — Bryce, Holy Boman Empire, 211-238, 
30.3-320 ; Henderson, Short Histonj ofGennany, 1, 122-240 ; Lodge, Close 
of the Middle Ages, 1-19, 98-123, and 394-418. 

1 Except in one case (1747.) , when the Hapsburgs had no direct male heir. 
The crown was then given to Francis I, the husband of the Hapsburg prin- 
cess, Maria Theresa (§ 274), after a brief rule by a Bavarian rival. 



174 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 161 

VIII. EUROPE BY SEPARATE STATES: SWITZERLAND. 

161. Switzerland began to grow into a political state just 
before the year 1300. The brave and sturdy peasantry, in the 
isolation of their mountain fastnesses, had preserved many old 
Teutonic customs and much of the old Teutonic independence.^ 
Some small districts (cantons) in the German Alps had belonged 
to the Hapsburg counts. When Rudolph of Hapsburg became 
duke of distant Austria (§ 158), these older possessions were 
left to the administration of subordinate officers. The extor- 
tions practised by such agents prepared the mountaineers for 
revolt ; and, in 1291, seventeen days after the death of Rudolph, 
the three "Forest Cantons " — Uri, Schwyz, and Untenoaldeji — ■ 
formed a "perpetual league" for mutual defense against tyranny. 

The league was not designed, at first, for independence.^ 
The confederates pledged themselves to receive no "judge" 
who should have purchased his office, and none who should 
not be an inhabitant of the district, and they declared their 
purpose to establish quiet and peace, — " yet in such manner, 
that every man according to his rank, shall obey and serve his 
overlord as it behooves him." The original Latin document of 
confederation is still preserved in the archives of Schwyz. 

For two centuries, from time to time, the Hapsburgs in- 
vaded Switzerland with powerful armies, in order to reduce 
the mountaineers to complete subjection ; and very soon the 
league against oppression by the lord's agents became a 
league for independence, against the lord himself. Freedom 
was practically established by two great victories, — Mor- 
garten (1315) and Sempach (1386).® Between the two battles, 

1 Read the account of a modern Swiss " folkmoot," in the opening pages of 
Freeman's Groioth of the English Constitution. 

2 Two of the cantons — Uri and Schwyz — are said to have had an older league, 
and to have secured recognition as free states from Frederick II in 1241. 

3 The myth of William Tell belongs to the period of Morgarten, and the 
myth of Arnold Winkelried to that of Sempach. These two stories are good 
subjects for special reports. Advanced students may be asked to present the 
modern criticism of the legends. 




175 



176 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§161 

five other cantons rebelled against their lords and joined the 
alliance. 

The new members — among them Bern, Zurich, and Luzern 
— were small city-states, wealthier and more aristocratic than 
the original union. Soon after Sempach, the constitution of 
the league was revised. In the new document, the confederate 
cantons claimed to be states of the Empire, but all dependence 
upon feudal lords was expressly rejected. Each canton kept 
complete control over its own internal affairs. The '' Diet," 
or central congress of representatives, was hardly more than 
a meeting of ambassadors, and was designed for little else than 
the management of foreign war and the division of the plun- 
der. The union preserved this loose character until after the 
French Revolution (1798), and the history after 1500 is mostly 
a record of miserable petty quarrels between the cantons. 
The growth into the remarkable federal republic of to-day was 
to be in the main a matter of French and American influences, 
in the nineteenth century. 

Late in the fourteenth century, Charles the Bold (§ 152) 
wrecked his reviving Middle Kingdom in an attempt to sub- 
due the Swiss; and a few years later, in 1499, Maximilian, 
the Hapsburg emperor, was defeated and forced to treat with 
the League as a sovereign state.^ Its independence was not 
formally recognized, however, until 1648 (§ 232). 

It is notable, as in the case of Spain (§ 155), that the heroic struggles 
of the Swiss produced disastrous results upon their character. Their 
victories developed a passion for plunder and for lighting ; so that, when 
there were no wars at home, great numbers of Swiss youth became "mer- 
cenaries." For centuries they were the most famous soldiery of Europe, 
and, strangely enough, when the great democratic movements of the 
French Revolution began, the thrones of European despots were guarded 
by hirelings from the free Swiss mountains. 

For Further Reading. — The federal history of Switzerland is of 
peculiar interest to American students, but the reading can be done more 

1 Between these two conflicts, five cantons were added to the confederation, 
making the thirteen that formed the union till the French Revolution. 



§162] THE NETHERLANDS. 177 

profitably in connection witli the later history (§§ 512 ff.). Lodge's Close 
of the Middle Ages gives an excellent brief account. Scott's Amie of 
Geierstein pictures Swiss life about 1475. 



IX. EUROPE BY SEPARATE STATES : THE NETHERLANDS, 

162. The Netherlands (Low Countries) did not form an inde- 
pendent state in the Middle Ages, but they deserve a special 
treatment. They were made up of a group of provinces, part 
of them fiefs of the Empire, part of them French fiefs. The 
southern portion has become modern Belgium ; the northern 
part, modern Holland, The land is a low, level tract, and in 
the Middle Ages it was more densely packed with teeming 
cities than any other part of Europe. Built, as many of them 
were, on land wrested from the sea,^ these cities took naturally 
to commerce. It was here that the merchants from Italy and 
the south of Europe met and exchanged wares with the Hansa 
merchants. But as long as the Hansa controlled the northern 
trade, these Netherland towns were workshops even more than 
they were trading rooms: "Nothing reached their shores," 
says one historian, " but received a more perfect finish ; what 
was coarse and almost worthless, became transmuted into 
something beautiful and valuable." Matthew Paris, a thir- 
teenth century English chronicler, exclaimed that " the whole 
world was clothed in English wool manufactured in Flanders.'" 

The inhabitants were a sturdy, independent, slow, industri- 
ous, persistent people. Ghent claimed eighty thousand citi- 
zens able to bear arms, while Ypres is said to have employed 
two hundred thousand people in the weaving of cloth. No 
doubt these numbers are exaggerations ; but wealth so abounded 
that the " counts " of this little district excelled most of the 
kings of Europe in magnificence. Early in the crusading age 
the cities had won or bought their liberties. Each province 
had its Diet, where sat nobles and city representatives. 



1 Amsterdam, Eotterdam, and many other cities to the north were built 
upon dams, or dykes. 



178 



WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. 



[§162 



The central fact in Netherland history through the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth centuries was the trade with England 
for raw wool. The need of this commodity for the Flemish 
looms made Flanders the ally of England in the long struggle 

between that country and 
France (§§ 139, 151). Dur- 
ing this period the dukes 
of Burgundy became mas- 
ters of Flanders, and, after 
many revolts and cruel 
suppressions, the ancient 
liberties of the towns were 
somewhat abridged. When 
Charles the Bold of Bur- 
gundy lost his life in trying 
to extend his dukedom into 
a kingdom (§ 152), and 
when Louis XI of France 
then seized most of his 
possessions, the Flemish 
towns wisely chose to re- 
main faithful to Mary, the 
daughter of Charles. In 
^ return for their fidelity, 
'*■' an Estates General of all 
the provinces secured from 
that princess a grant of 
Hall of the Cloth-Makers' Gild at 27ie Great Privilege, the 
Ypres : begun in 1200 ; finished in 1364. ^ Ma or. a Parl-a of the 
Now the Town Hall. - From Liibke. Magna barta Ot tUe 

Netherlands" (1478). This 
document promised that the provinces might hold Diets at will ; 
that no new tax should be imposed but by the Estates G-eneral ; 
that no Avar should be declared but by the consent of that 
body ; that offices should be filled by natives only ; and that 
Dutch should be the official language. 

Mary married the young Maximilian of Hapsburg, soon to 




§ 163] THE PAPACY. 179 

become emperor (§ 160), and five years later she died, leav- 
ing an infant son Philip. Maximilian claimed the regency, 
and, after conquering the cities in war, he revoked The Great 
Privilege. His son Philip, however, assuming the government 
in 1494, restored the " ancient privileges " of the provinces ; 
and The Great Privilege, though not expressly confirmed, 
remained the standard of rights in the hearts of the people. 

Philip married Joanna of Spain (daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella), 
and a son, Charles, born in 1500, became the greatest ruler in Europe 
(§§ 172, 209 ff.). When his realms were divided, the Netherlands passed 
with Spain to his son Philip II, in whose reign began the terrible but 
glorious struggle that made this little spot of sea-rescued land a "holy 
land " to all who love liberty (§§ 221 ff.). 

FoK Further Reading. — Rogers' Holland, and Griffis' Brave Little 
Holland, or the opening pages of The Students Motley. 



X. THE PAPACY IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH 
CENTURIES. 

163. The Revolt of France and England. — The thirteenth 
century conflict between popes and emperors had left the popes 
victorious ; but at once new foes appeared to challenge their 
overlordship. In France and England the people were coming 
to have a new sense of national unity, and had already begun 
to rebel against papal authority in temporal matters ^ and to 
demand that the government of the land should be independent 
of all papal supervision. To this feeling, the Emperor Freder- 
ick II had tried to appeal in letters to the kings : " My house 
is on fire. Hurry, bring water, lest the fire spread to your 
house too ! " And, soon after his fall, France and England 
did take up in earnest the struggle against papal claims. 

1 An early instance is afforded by the "Constitutions of Clarendon " in Eng- 
land, under Henry II (§ 128, note). Advanced students may be asked to 
report upon the situation during the reign of Henry III. Neither people nor 
kings, of course, had any intention of questioning the authority of the pope 
in spiritual matters. Their attitude in many respects was like that of the 
people and government of Italy toward the pope since 1870 (§ 490). 



180 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 164 

The conflict was hastened by the long wars between the 
French and English kings. Both needed money, and both 
were trying to introduce systems of national taxation in the 
place of the old feudal revenues. The clergy had been exempt 
from feudal services ; but they owned so much of the wealth 
of the two countries, that the kings were not willing to leave 
them exempt from the new taxes. Pope Boniface VIII issuea 
a bull forbidding any prince to impose taxes on the clergy 
without papal consent, and threatening excommunication against 
all clergy who paid. Thus the struggle began. 

164. Edward I, Philip IV, and Boniface VIII. — When the 
English clergy, trusting in this papal decree, refused "to pay 
taxes, Edward I outlawed^ th«m; and it at once appeared that, 
in comparison with this practical " excommunication "" by the 
state, the old clerical excommunication was mere stage thunder. 
The clergy generally paid, until, a little later, a compromise 
was effected whereby they were permitted to tax themselves. 

France, howcA^er, was the scene of a sharper contest. As it 
progressed, Boniface set forth the old claims of papal suprem- 
acy over princes ; ^ but Philip IV treated these claims with 
haughty contempt, and the Estates General (1302), even the 
clerical Estate, denied the Pope any control over the state and 
pledged their lives to defend the " ancient liberties of the 
French nation." Philip forbade the payment of any revenues 
from his realm to the Pope, and arrested the papal legate. 
Boniface threatened to depose the King. A few days later, a 

1 To outlaw a man was to put him outside the protection of the law: he 
could not bring suit to recover property or damages, and oifenses against him 
were not "crimes." 

2 " The spiritual power has to establish the princely power. [The refer- 
ence is to the consecration of kings at their coronation by ecclesiastics.] 
Therefore if the earthly power err, it shall be judged by the spiritual 
power. ... A spiritual man judgeth all things, but he himself is judged by 
no one. . . . Whoever re.sists this power . . . resists the ordination of 
God. . . . Indeed we declare . . . that it is altogether necessary to salva- 
tion for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff." The bull 
from which these sentences are taken, as well as the one regarding taxation, 
are given in Henderson's Documents, 432-437. 



§ 166] THE PAPACY. 181 

company of French soldiers, with an anti-papal clique of Roman 
nobles, besieged and captured Boniface ; and the chagrin of the 
old man at the indignities and insults heaped upon him proba- 
bly hastened his death (1303). 

165. The " Babylonian Captivity." — Soon after the death of 
Boniface, Philip secured the election of a French pope, together 
with the removal of the papal capital to Avignon, a papal city 
in Provence, on the French frontier, controlled by French influ- 
ence. Here the popes remained for seventy years (1309-1377), 
in " the Babylonian Captivity of the church." 

Of course the papacy lost public respect. It was no longer 
an impartial umpire, even in appearance. Politically it had 
sunk into a mere tool of the French kings, and the enemies of 
France could not be expected to show it reverence. The Eng- 
lish Parliaments of Edward III passed the great statutes of 
Provisors and of Praemunire, to limit papal control over church 
appointments in England and to prevent appeals from English 
ecclesiastical courts to the papal court. Even Germany, dis- 
tracted as it was, had too much national feeling to allow to a 
" French pope " any voice in determining its emperor ; and in 
1338, the German Electors and a German Diet formally denied 
that the popes had any part in the choice of their ruler. In 
Italy the Papal States themselves fell into anarchy and revolu- 
tion, so that there was imminent danger that the popes might 
lose their principality altogether.^ 

166. The Great Schism. The Hussite Heresy. — In 1377, to 
save the papal territory in Italy, Gregory XI returned to Rome ; 
but this act was only the signal for a greater disaster than the 
exile itself. The next year saw two popes, one at Rome and 
one at Avignon, each hurling anathemas at the other. England 
and Germany supported the pope at Rome ; France and Sicily 
the one at Avignon. It had become purely a question of politi- 

1 This was the period of the enthusiast Rienzi, the popular dictator of the 
city of Rome. Rienzi dreamed of making a renovated Rome the head of 
Italy and of the world. Special report: Rienzi's life and work. Students 
will enjoy Bulwer's novel, Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes. 



182 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 167 

cal advantage whether a nation recognized the one or the other. 
The papacy was never to recover altogether from its loss of 
dignity and power during the century of exile and schism. 

The church itself began to be threatened, as well as the 
papacy. The Wyclif movement (§ 141) took place toward 
the close of the exile. The Lancastrian monarchs, it is true, 
with the hearty approval of Parliament, re]3ressed the Lollards 
savagely, and England seemed saved to Catholicism ; but 
meantime the seeds of the Lollard heresy had been scattered 
in a distant part of Europe. Richard II of England had 
married a princess of Bohemia. Some of her follov/ers had 
carried the teachings of Wyclif from the University of Oxford 
back to the Bohemian University of Prague; and about 1400 
John Huss, a professor at Prague, became the leader in a radi- 
cal reform movement along the lines that Wyclif had followed. 

167. Unity restored : the Great Church Councils. — Under 
these ominous conditions, there arose a widespread demand 
within the church for a General Council, representing all 
Christendom, to restore unity of government and doctrine. 
This plan implied a power in the church higher than that of 
the pope, and it was opposed vehemently both by Rome and 
Avignon. Finally the cardinals called the Council of Pisa 
(1409). This body declared both popes deposed, and chose a 
new one. The result was three popes; for the Council was 
not really universal in character, and, acting with unwise 
haste, it failed to secure obedience. 

Soon after, however, the new Pope, under pressure from the 
Emperor, called the Council of Constance (1414). Five thou- 
sand delegates attended, and all Latin Europe was repre- 
sented. The Council put down heresy sternly. John Huss 
had come to the assembly under a " safe conduct " from the 
Emperor. This was shamefully disregarded.^ Huss was 
imprisoned, tried, condemned, and burned at the stake ; and 



1 The Emperor was assured by the great churchmen that no promise to a 
heretic was binding. 



§ 167] THE PAPACY. 183 

when his followers rose in arms, a crusade was preached 
against them.^ The following year (1415), one of his associ- 
ates, Jerome of Prague, was burned. (Cf. § 141, close.) 

Though so bitter toward heresy, the Council acted in mat- 
ters of church government with caution and wisdom. One 
pope was brought to resign ; the others were deposed ; and 
unity was established under a new pope, Martin V. The 
Council had designed other reforms, but Martin dissolved it 
before it could act further. It had already made provision 
for Councils at regular intervals of ten years, but this pro- 
vision also the popes were to render valueless.^ For the 
following century, down to the time of Luther, the history 
of the popes and of the church contains no striking develop- 
ments.^ Thus, alone of all the old institutions of Europe, the 
church passed out of the Middle Ages essentially unchanged 
in character. 

EoR Further Eeading. — Original material for this period is to be 
found in Henderson's Documents, 432-440, and in Pennsylvania Reprints, 
III, No. 6. (Tlie latter treats of the Council of Constance.) 

Modern accounts : concise treatments are given by Adams, Civiliza- 
tion, 392-415, and by Lodge, Close of the Middle Ages, chs. ii, ix-xi, A 
scholarly Catholic view may be found in Alzog's Church History, II and 
III, and in Pastor's History of the Popes, I. There is a good account by 
Creighton in his History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reforma- 
tion, I and II. (These three works are all too diffuse for young students.) 
Poole's Wycliffe and Movements for Reform treats the Hussite movement. 

1 A war of fifteen or twenty years desolated Bohemia and crushed the 
more radical party among the Hussites. The moderate wing of the reform 
secured some recognition of their rights. Henderson's Short History of Ger- 
inany, I, 215-220, gives a brief survey of the struggle. 

2 If the plan could liave been adopted in good faith, it would have limited 
the papacy somewhat as Parliament limited the English kingship, and no 
doubt it would have made the subsequent history of Europe very different 
from its actual course. 

2 The most interesting episode in this period is the career and martyrdom of 
Savonarola, the Florentine reformer. This is a good subject for a special 
report by an advanced student. Savonarola appears prominently in George 
Eliot's Romola. 



184 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 168 



XI. NEW PERILS FROM THE EAST: TARTARS AND TURKS. 

168. The Tartar Invasions of the Thirteenth Century. — During the 
later part of the crusading age, Europe was menaced suddenly by a peril 
which for a time seemed greater than that of the Turks. Shortly after 
1200, a great military leader had appeared among the Tartars of the 
Asiatic steppes. Assuming the title Genghis Klian, or Lord of Lords, he 
organized the scattered nomad tribes into a terrible fighting machine, 
and set about the devastation and conquest of the world. The ancient 
Scythian and Hunnish invasions ^ were repeated upon a larger scale and 
with greater horrors. Fertile countries were turned into silent, dismal 
deserts. Populous districts became tombs, marked only by enormous 
pyramids of blackened corpses. Genghis himself conquered China, 
northern India, and Persia, while his son invaded Europe. In 1223, 
the rising Christian state of Russia was crushed by these heathen bar- 
barians, ^ and southern Russia became a Tartar province. The Mongol 
Empire reached from Pekin and the Indus to Crimea and the Dnieper. 
The death of the Great Khan (1227) recalled his son to Asia and gave 
Europe a brief respite ; but, ten years later, the assault was renewed. 
Moscow was burned, and northern Russia became a tributary province ; 
Poland and Hungary were ravaged and conquered : half of Europe was 
Tartar, and these new Huns even crossed the Danube. In vain did 
Emperor Frederick II appeal for aid to the rest of Christendom. A 
German army under Frederick's son inflicted a slight check upon the 
invaders, but again Western Europe was saved only by the death of a 
Mongol emperor. Soon afterward the vast Tartar realm fell into frag- 
ments, and the pressing danger passed away. 

The conquerors took on civilization, too, in China and India, from the 
subject races ; but parts of Asia have hardly yet recovered from the 
ravages of the conquest. The whole subsequent development of Russia 
has felt its baleful influence ; and for three centuries a Tartar state. 
The Golden Horde, maintained itself in southern Russia. The escape 
of Western Europe, through no great merit of its own, is one of the 
supremely fortunate events in history.^ 



1 Ancient Historij, §§ 72, 569-571. 

2 These Mongols were not Mohammedans like their relatives the Turks 
(§§ 91, 169), but were heathen like the old Huns. 

3 Special report: the career of Tamerlane, another great Tartar conqueror, 
in the fourteenth century, who for a time checked the Turks (§ 169). . The 
beneficial effect of the Mongol Empire upon geographical knowledge in 
Europe will be noted in § 197. 



§ 169] TARTARS AND TURKS. 185 

169. Southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Turks (Mohamme- 
dans). — The Greek Empire never recovered fully from its over- 
throw in the Fourth Crusade. In the fourteenth century, the 
Servians (Slavs) built up a great state under their " emperor," 
Stephen Duslian, but both Greek and Slav were soon to fall 
before a new foe. 

The Ottoman Tiorks first came to notice about 1240, when 
small bands of them from the distant Jaxartes appeared in 
Asia Minor, in the service of their kinsmen, the Seljuk Turks 
(§ 91). Tlie newcomers soon became the ruling race, and in 
1346, a century after their first appearance, they established 
themselves also on the European side of the straits, — though 
Constantinople held out for a century more, a Christian island 
encompassed by seas of Mohammedanism. At the battle of 
Kassova (1389), the Turks completed the overthrow of the 
Servians and other Slav peoples of the Balkan regions ; and a 
few years later a crushing defeat was inflicted upon the Hun- 
garians and Poles. About 1400, Tamerlane (§ 168, note) 
seemed for a moment to have shattered the Turkish power, 
but Mahomet I reconstructed the Empire, and in 1453 his son, 
Mahomet the Conqueror, entered Constantinople through the 
breach where the heroic Constantine Palceologus, last of the 
Greek emperors, had died sword in hand. 

Constantinople has remained the capital of the Turkish 
Empire from that day to the present time. That empire con- 
tinued to expand for over a century more (until about 1550) : 
and for a time it seemed as though nothing could save Western 
Europe. Not until well into the nineteenth century did either 
Slav or Greek in the Balkan regions begin to find relief from 
Mohammedan oppression (§§ 576 ff.).* 

The Turks were incapable of civilization, in the European sense, and 
they liave always remained a hostile army encamped among subject 
Christian populations, whom their rule has blighted. A chief factor in 

1 The critical position of Hungary, and her heroic services against the Turk, 
may be made a topic for special report. The great defeats of the Turks at 
Lepanto (1571) and before Vienna (1683) will be noted in §§ 224, 257. 




186 



§170] POLITICAL SITUATION AT THE REFORMATION. 187 

their early success was the "tribute of children," organized into the 
famous fighting force of Janissaries. Says Freeman : "A fixed pro- 
portion of the strongest and most promising boys among the conquered 
Christian nations were carried off for the service of the Ottoman princes. 
They were brought up in the Mohammedan faith and were employed 
in civil and military functions. . . . Out of them was formed the 
famous force of the Janissaries, the new soldiers who for three centuries 

— as long as they were levied in this way — formed the strength of the 
Ottoman armies. ... In this way the strength of the conquered nations 
was turned against themselves. They could not throw off the yoke, be- 
cause those among them who were their natural leaders were pressed into 
the service of their enemies." 

For Further Reading. — Mijatovich's Gonstantine, the Last Em- 
peror of the Greeks ; Oman's Byzantine Empire, chs. xxv, xxvi ; Poole's 
Story of Turkey, chs. i-vii ; Creasy's Ottoman Turks, chs. i-vi ; Lodge's 
Close of the Middle Ages, 494-514 ; Freeman's Ottoman Power. 1-135. 

XIL THE POLITICAL SITUATION JUST AFTER 1500, AT THE 
OPENING OF THE REFORMATION. 

170. A Political Summary. — In the ninth and tenth centuries, 
three imposing figures seem to fill the stage of European history, 

— the Emperor of the East, the Emperor of the West, and the 
Pope. By 1500, the first had forever vanished, the second had 
shrunk into a petty prince, and the third, politically, had retired 
far into the background. In the tenth century, other western 
lands had been but a fringe to the mighty Holy Roman Empire 
(Germany and Italy). In 1500, Germany and Italy, "weak and 
divided, were about to become the battle ground and the prey 
of new powers. On the north and west, England, Denmark, 
France, and Spain had grown into strong and unified mon- 
archies ; on the southeast, the Mohammedan power, which had 
just been driven from the west of Europe, had advanced to the 
Danube and was threatening Austria itself with conquest. The 
Empire had lost not only organization, but considerable terri- 
tory : all claims upon Poland and Hungary were gone, and the 
northern Slavs and Swedes were seizing upon the lands once 
held by the Teutonic Knights ; Switzerland was practically 



188 WESTEEN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 171 

independent, and Holland soon was to be so (§ § 221-226) ; half 
the kingdom of Burgundy had already fallen to France, and 
the failure of Charles the Bold to reestablish the " Middle 
Kingdom" had brought that same aggressive French realm 
into touch with the Rhine provinces of Germany, many of 
which it was soon to seize (§§ 212, 232, 259 ff.)- 

Farther east, there loomed a reviving Russian state at Moscow. Ivan 
the Great (1462-1505) threw off the Tartar yoke ; and his grandson, Ivan 
the Terrible, extended Russian sway to the Caspian. However, Russia 
was still an inland state, shut off from the Black Sea by the Tartars, from 
the Baltic by the Swedes, and from any contact with Germany by the 
Poles ; not until about 1700 was it to count in western politics. 

171. New International Relations ; the Conflict for Italy. — 

The breaking up of Christendom into clearly defined monarchic 
states introduced a new period. The leading states became 
intensely jealous of each other. France and Spain were at 
first the great rivals, and Italy was the first field of conflict. 
In Italy, as in France and Spain, there had been some move- 
ment toward unity. The thirteenth century had seen the land 
broken up into a multitude of petty states ; but by 1450 almost 
all of these had been brought under one or another of the 
five " Great States " — the kingdom of Sicily in the south, 
the Papal States in the center, and in the north the duchy 
of Milan and the so-called republics of Venice and Florence. 
During most of the second half of the fifteenth century Italy 
enjoyed comparative peace, but the movement toward consoli- 
dation had not gone far enough to afford security, now that 
other countries were united at home and were free to turn 
their attention to a defenseless neighbor. In 1494, Charles 
VIII of France crossed the Alps with a large army to assert 
his claim as King of Sicily. '^ Charles was animated by wild 
dreams of conquest. He marched victoriously from end to 
end of the peninsula, virtually its master, regulating matters 
at will, not only in his southern kingdom, but in the northern 

1 A claim which he derived from the House of Anjou (§ 86). 



§ 172] POLITICAL SITUATION AT THE EEFORMATION. 189 

states as well. However, enemies quickly gathered behind 
him : Ferdinand of Aragon, also, claimed the kingdom of Sicily ; 
Venice and some other states joined the anti- French party ; and 
Charles secured his retreat into France only by a desperate 
battle. Spain was left in possession of Sicily and Naples, and 
the French dominion vanished as quickly as it had risen ; but 
the expedition of Charles heralded three centuries of conflict 
between the European powers for the rich and beautiful 
peninsula.^ 

172. The Hapsburg Power: Dominions of Charles V. — While 
France was beginning to seize foreign territory, Ferdinand 
of Aragon was building up family alliances to strengthen 
the power of Spain. One daughter he married to the young 
English prince, soon to become King Henry VIII, and an- 
other to Philip of Hapsburg, son of the Emperor Maximilian 
(§§ 160, 162). From this last marriage in 1500, was born a 
child, Charles, who was almost to restore a universal empire. 

The early death of his father left the boy Charles ruler of 
the rich provinces of the Netherlands, and in 1516 he suc- 
ceeded his grandfather Ferdinand as king of Spain and of 
Sicily. In the same year, Francis I ascended the French 
throne.^ These two ambitious princes were to be the chief 
political forces in Western Europe for a generation. In 1519, 
on the death of Maximilian, the two young kings, with Henry 
VIII of England, became candidates for the imperial title. 
Through the wealth of his Flemish merchants, Charles was 
successful ; and his other widespread realms ^ gave a physical 
support to the position of Emperor, such as it had not pos- 
sessed since Hohenstaufen days. 

1 Cf. Ancient History, § 273. 

2 Six years earlier, Henry VIII had become King of England, and five 
years later, Solyman the Magnificent became Sultan of the Turks. 

3 On his mother's side, Charles had inherited Spain and southern Italy and 
the gold-producing lands of America which the discovery of Columbus had 
just made Spain's. From his father and paternal grandfather he inherited 
the Netherlands, Austria, and other Hapsburg possessions. By election, he 
was Emperor of the rest of Germany and of northern Italy. 



190 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. [§ 173 

173. Charles and Francis in Italy. — Francis I had already 
been engaged in asserting a French, claim on Milan in northern 
Italy, and the two great rivals now came into conflict. Com- 
pact France was probably nearly equal in power to all the 
scattered Hapsburg realms, and Francis found mighty reen- 
forcement from an event which occurred just at this moment 
in Germany. In 1520 Martin Luther publicly burned a papal 
bull (§ 207) and started the Protestant Reformation, which 
was to split Germany at once into opposing camps and to 
render for ever impossible the restoration of the old imperial 
unity of Christendom, of which Charles perhaps had dreamed. 

REVIEW EXERCISES. 

1. Fact drills. 

a. Dates. Add to previous lists the following : — 

1100-1300, Crusades. 1381, Peasant Rising. 

1215, Magna Carta. 1414, Council of Constance. 

1254-1273, Great Interregnum. 1453, Fall of Constantinople. 
1295, Model Parliament. 1492, Columbus. Capture of Granada. 

h. Fix other events in connection with the above; such as the Swiss 
Confederacy (after the death of Rudolph, who becomes emperor 
1273, at close of Interregnum), Innocent III, Albigensian 
heresy, Tartar invasions, the first Estates General (soon after 
the Model Parliament), etc. 

c. Extend list of terms for brief explanation (cf. pages 51, 96) : " take 
the cross," Dukes of Athens, Teutonic Order, Janissaries, etc. 
(The list should be a long one for this period.) 

2. Make a syllabus (cf. page 96). 

3. Review and note force of all introductory "theme" sentences (in 

italics, at head of Chapters or Divisions, as on pages 1, 22, and 60). 

4. Review questions presented by class (cf. page 51). 

5. Map reviews and comparisons. 

6. General topics : (a) parliamentary assemblies of Europe, — Diets, 

Estates, Cortes, etc.; (b) movements for religious reforms within 
the church ; (c) movements for religious reforms that threatened, 
at least, to act outside the church ; (d) history of the medieval 
church. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE TRANSITION TO A NEW AGE : THE RENAISSANCE, 

1350-1550. 

I. NATURE OF THE RENAISSANCE. 

174. Classicism and the Renaissance. — About 1350 there 
began in Italy a new movement, which we call the Renaissance. 
It is hard to date the period for all Europe, because it differed 
for different countries. It was well over in Italy by 1550, while 
in England it had hardly begun before 1500 and was to last 
through Shakspere's age, — to about 1600.-^ It was a period of 
tremendous change. Europe transformed its whole habit of 
thought and way of feeling. The name Eenaissance is a fit 
one, because the change consisted largely in a " rebirth " into 
the world of an old, long-forgotten way of looking at life. This 
older way had expressed itself in the ancient classical art and 
literature ; and naturally the men of the new age were pas- 
sionately enthusiastic over all remains of the classical period. 
The term Renaissance is sometimes used as though it applied 
chiefly to this admiration for classical antiquity. The real 
characteristic of the period, however, was not its devotion to 
the past, hut its joyous and self-reliant attitude in the present. 
The men of the Renaissance cared for the ancient culture of 
Greece and of Rome, because they found it in sympathy with 
what they themselves thought and felt in their own day. 

175. Characteristics of the Middle Ages. — Between the classi- 
cal and the renaissance ages there had intervened several cen- 
turies of very different life and thought. These centuries were 
the Middle Ages. Three characteristics had been especially 

1 This chapter runs over into the next era, as is natural in dealing with a 
transition age. At this point the student should reread §§ 4 and 5. 

191 



192 THE KENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 176 

prominent. (1) Ignorance was the general rule ; and even the 
learned followed slavishly in the footsteps of some intellectual 
master. (2) Man as an individual counted for little. In all 
his activities he was part of some gild or order or corporation. 
(3) The dominant intellectual forces were the ecclesiastical 
ideals. Beauty in nature was little regarded, or regarded as 
almost a temptation of the Evil One. Men not only felt it 
wrong to take delight in the world, but thought they ought 
always to think of the terrors of a world to come. The pagan's 
disregard for his shadowy future world ^ had been succeeded by 
so intense an interest in the future as to lead to neglect of the 
present life. Thus, during the Middle Ages, thousands upon thou- 
sands of the best minds withdrew from the world, giving up all 
natural pleasures and duties, to prepare for the world to come, 
by fastings and scourgings in monks' cells. Even princes and 
kings surrendered their pomp and power for this purpose. 

176. Characteristics of the Renaissance. — The Renaissance 
changed all this. For the medieval instinct of blind obedience 
to authority and tradition, it substituted the free inquiring 
way in which the Ancients had looked at things.^ It awoke 
to delight in flower and sky and mountain, in the beauty of 
the human body, in all the pleasures of the natural world, and 
also of the world of thought and imagination. A new self- 
reliance and self-confidence marked the individual, and a fresh 
and lively originality appeared in every form of thought. 

The transformation from the medieval to the renaissance age 
is one of the two or three most wonderful changes in all history. 
It manifested itself first in art and literature, then in scientific 
study and in religion, and finally, long after, in politics. The 
change began in Italy. There it had its chief manifestation 
in the revival of art, but it produced also a revival of learning. 
This second phase of the Italian Eenaissance was the first to 
travel into northern lands. It concerned itself with religion 
and the Early Church ; and, together with the moral earnestness 

1 Ancient History, § 143. ^ Ancient History, § 83, close. 



§178] PRECEDING MOVEMENTS — UNIVERSITIES. 193 

of the northern races and with the new confidence in individual 
judgment, it produced the Protestant Reformation. Sometimes 
it is said tliat the Renaissance was mainly artistic in the south 
of Europe and intellectual and moral in the north. Such a 
statement is convenient, but it should not blind us to the 
important part which Italy played in the early intellectual 
movement (§§ 189, 195). 

177. Method of Treatment in this Chapter. — Thus the Renaissance 
was a revolt against the medieval spirit in all its forms. The causes were 
mainly intellectual. Accordingly, as an introduction, we must outline 
the intellectiial side of European life during the Middle Ages, which has 
been omitted so far in this volume. The student should realize, too, that 
the changes about to be noted in various lines of thought and feeling 
(Divisions II-V) were intimately interrelated, although we can trace 
them best one by one. 

II. MEDIEVAL SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
A. Universities. 

178. Intellectual Studies in the "Dark Ages." — Intellectu- 
ally, Western Europe lay in torpor through the early Middle 
Ages. Except for the brief gleam of Charlemagne's time, 
this unwholesome sleep was not broken until about the year 
1100. Eor several centuries before that date, studying and 
teaching were confined to the schools connected with the mon- 
asteries and cathedrals ; and in these, almost the whole aim 
was to prepare the clergy for their duties. Even this all- 
important task, through the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, 
was poorly performed. King Alfred in England lamented 
that hardly a priest south of the Thames could read the services 
he repeated by rote,^ and like complaints were not uncommon 

1 " So clean was learning fallen away among the English that there were 
very few on this side of the Humber who knew how to render their daily 
prayers in English, or so much as to translate an epistle out of Latin into 
English. I ween that there were not so many beyond the Humber. They 
were so few that I can not think of a single one south of the Thames when I 
took the kingdom." —From Alfred's Preface to his Translation of Gregory's 
Pastoral Care. 



194 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. 



[§179 



on the continent. Some cathedral schools preserved faint 
traditions of the old learning, in their courses in " arts " ; but 
in the best of them the studies were only a shrunken survival 
of the trivium and qiiadrivium of Eoman times.^ The work 
consisted in committing to memory dry epitomes of knowledge, 
and the teacher's task lay in dictating such abstracts, word by 
word, in Latin, for the students to copy. There was no inquiry, 

no investigation, no criti- 
cism ; there was of course 
no study of nature, and 
there were almost no 
books. Such schools could 
not advance learning, but 
they did help to preserve, 
through the "Dark Ages," 
the spirit of scholarship 
and a little of the older 
knowledge, and so made 
it possible for Europe to . 
advance again when more 
favorable conditions had 
been provided. 

179. The Rise of Medie- 
val Universities. — Better 
conditions appeared about 
the beginning of the twelfth century. From that time, Europe 
was ever more and more astir with intellectual life. The rising 
towns established lay schools to train for business pursuits j 
medical and legal services, which had been performed before 

1 The ancient trivium comprised language, rhetoric, and logic ; the quadriv- 
ium included music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The student would 
do well at this point to review the Ancient History, §§ 258, 259, 483, 484, 539-542, 
and 647. The remarkable Irish and English Schools, just before and after Charle- 
magne, to some degree form an exception to the statement in the text. They 
might be made the subject of a special report. See Zimmern's Irish Culture. 

2 Such schools used the vernacular, instead of Latin ; and, besides reading 
and writing, they taught a little arithmetic and geography. 




Monk teaching the Globe ; after a thir- 
teenth century manuscript now in the 
National Library at Paris. — From La- 
croix, Science and Literature. 



§180] PRECEDING MOVEMENTS — UNIVERSITIES. 195 

by the clergy, were now prepared for by special study ; some 
of the old cathedral schools began to feel the influence of 
Arabian culture from the Universities of Cordova and Alex- 
andria; Constantinople, through Venice, began to introduce 
Greek learning into Italy; and all these impulses were intensi- 
fied, of course, by the crusades. 

The result of these forces was the medieval university. 
The early institutions of this character grew up as voluntary 
associations of teachers ^ and students. Usually they appeared 
alongside some cathedral school, but they were lay schools, not 
ecclesiastical schools; and, like many medieval associations, 
they took on the gild form.^ The earliest universities did not 
come into existence at any precise moment. Most of them 
finally received papal bulls or royal patents, confirming their 
privileges ; but these documents simply recognized and sanc- 
tioned institutions which had slowly formed themselves. At a 
later time, however, popes and kings became the founders of 
many universities. The term "university" did not at first 
imply instruction in all forms of knowledge : ^ a university 
always comprised a course in " arts," and, for the graduates of 
this course, one or more professional courses, — law, medicine, 
or theology.* The '' arts " course continued to be based upon 
the ancient trivium and quadrivium, and the great majority of 
university students never went beyond it. 

180. Typical Early Universities. — The three universities usually 
selected as types of the early period are Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. 



1 It was commonly the personality of some great teacher which determined 
that a university should grow at one place rather than at another ; see § 180. 

2 The students working for the first degree corresponded to the appren- 
tices of the trade gilds ; the bachelors of arts, to the journeymen ; and the 
" masters " and " doctors " to the trade " masters." Even the forms of pub- 
lic examinations and graduation, some of which still survive, were modeled 
upon trade gild customs. 

8 Indeed the word " university," as used in the early charters, meant only 
" all of you," and was sometimes applied to organizations which had nothing 
to do with teaching, — even to trade gilds. 

* Theology included philosophy. 



196 THE RENAISSANCE, 1850-1550. [§ 180 

Curiously enough, each of the three grew out of a different specialty, — 
Salerno from the study of medicine, Bologna from that of Roman law, 
and Paris from that of theology.^ 

a. Near Salerno was a great Benedictine monastery, which even 
through the Dark Ages had been noted for its excellence in medical in- 
struction. Probably the science of the Arabs in southern Italy had some 
effect upon it in this respect. Somewhat before 1100, according to a 
rather legendary story, Constantine the African., a Carthaginian Greek 
who had studied in the most famous Arabian schools, came to Salerno 
and gave a wide reputation to a school of medicine there, distinct from 
the monastery school. Certainly before 1100 there was such a lay 
school, with important privileges conferred by Robert Guiscard (§ 67 6). 
This "University of Salerno," then, was the first "university." The 
medical course of five years required a preparatory course of three years 
in " arts." 

Salerno, however, had no courses in law or theology. Before 1200 
these latter subjects had become famous at Bologna and Paris ; and then 
the Emperor Frederick II, in 1224, established a University of Naples, to 
combhie all the branches of instruction, " in order that those who hunger 
for knowledge may find loithin the kingdom the food for which they 
yearn, and may not be forced to go into exile to beg the bread of learning 
in strange lands." The medical college at Salerno was incorporated in 
this new institution. This University of Naples was the first university 
created by royal charter. ^ 

6. At Bologna, about 1100, Irnerius, a teacher in an "arts " school, 
became deeply interested in Roman Law.^ There are various legends that 
try to account for this interest. The certain fact is that because of it 
Irnerius practically rediscovered Roman Law for Western Europe. He 
began to teach it to all who would study, and Bologna was soon thronged 
with the students who gathered around him. In 1158, Frederick Barba- 

1 " It was the needs of the human body which originated Salemo ; it was 
the needs of men as related to each other in a civil organism which originated 
Bologna ; it was the eternal needs of the human spirit in its relation to the 
Unseen that originated Paris." — Laurie, Rise of Universities, 109-110. 

2 It was distinctly a " state " university. The state appointed the profes- 
sors, endowed chairs, and issued licenses (or degrees) to students in the dif- 
ferent professions. The professors were free from taxes and military service, 
and possessed a variety of other privileges. Like privileges were accorded to 
the teachers in other medieval universities. Cf. Ancient History, § 483. 

3 Roman law had never died out in Italy, and indeed it had always been 
studied in some Italian schools ; but, alter the work of Irnerius, its study and 
use spread rapidly over the West. 



§180] 



PRECEDING MOVEMENTS — UNIVERSITIES. 



197 



rossa confirmed by charter various rights which the "University" had 
come to enjoJ^^ 

The government of the University was vested in the body of students, 
not in the city or state or even in the teaching body. This community of 
scholars not only managed its own internal affairs, deciding what studies 
should be pursued and how long the lecture hour should last, but it also 
judged its own members in all cases, both civil and criminal, in which 
they were connected with outsiders. As the University grew, there 
occurred much disorder and crime and many serious conflicts between 
students and citizens. These were the first " town and gown " combats. 
The city authorities wished to assume jurisdiction over the students, in 
criminal cases at least; but the Pope, in 1254, confirmed the "ancient 
rights " of the University. Like other early universities, the institution 

had almost no buildings, or 

fixed plant, and the ease with 
which it could migrate to a 
neighboring town made the city 
content to put up with much 
inconvenience rather than risk 
losing so large a population 
and so famous a school.^ 

c. The University of Paris 
grew directly out of an "arts" 
school connected with the Ca- 
thedral of Notre Dame. In the 
eleventh century, a learned 
monk, William of Ghampeaux, 
as head master, had made that 
school one of the three or four 
most famous in France and 
had given new prominence to 
the study of theology there. 

But the impulse to a real university dates from the work of Abelard as 
head of the school, about 1115. Abelard ^ did not remain long at Paris, 







Seal of the Faculty of Theology of 
Paris; fourteenth century. — From La- 
croix, Scie7ice cmd Literature. 



i"We owe," says the charter, "protection to all our subjects, but 
especially to those whose knowledge enlightens the world." Bologna was 
soon known as the " Mother of Laws." 

2 The great University of Padua did grow out of a secession from 
Bologna, and a secession from Paris to Oxford first made the last named city 
a real university town. 

3 Abelard is one of the saddest and most romantic figures of the Middle 
Ages. An advanced student might prepare a special report upon his life. 



198 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. 



[§180 



and thousands of students followed him from that school to different 
places and even into the desert, when he retired for a time to a hermitage ; 
but his brilliant intellect had given to the study of theology and philoso- 
phy an impulse which his remaining students at Paris carried on, until 
to the old "arts " school there was soon added a new and distinct body 
of teachers in theology and philosophy. A new faculty in arts grew up 

also. Several hundred masters 
of arts and of theology gave 
instruction, each in his own 
dwelling, to all who came as 
students. 1 

Gradually the masters or- 
ganized, especially to confer 
degrees; and by 1140 there 
seems to have been a definite 
" University of Paris." Prom 
time to time the French kings 
and the popes confirmed its 
privileges or gave it new ones. 
At Paris, unlike democratic 
Bologna, the controlling power 
was really vested in the mas- 
ters,2 not in the students. The 
latter, however, had some voice. 
As at other universities of note, 
the students came from all 
parts of Europe.^ Naturally, those from one country grouped themselves 
together for mutual assistance, and such a group was known as a "nation." * 




Seal of the Picardy Nation of the 
University of Paris ; fourteenth cen- 
tury. — From Lacroix. 



1 In this way arose the " Latin Quarter " of Paris. The district known by 
that name is still inhabited largely by students. 

2 This aristocratic organization was finally to become the dominant one in 
European imiversities. 

s There was a surprising fluidity in medieval life. Merchants, soldiers of 
fortune, friars, journeymen, were always on the move; but the poor wander- 
ing scholar was the typical traveler of them all. He shared in some degree 
the clerical privileges, and begged bis way from place to place. Young men 
thought nothing of passing from Oxford to Paris or Bologna and back again, 
to sit at the feet of this or that famous teacher and to see the world by the 
way. Indeed, we are told that public stage coaches in Europe originated 
mainly in the needs of travel which gradually developed in connection with 
the universities. 

4 A "nation " might include the students from several adjoining countries 
The "English nation" at Paris contained men from all the north of Europe 



§181] PRECEDING MOVEMENTS — UNIVERSITIES. 199 

At Paris, before 1200, there were four of these "nations," each with various 
subdivisions ; and the nations and subdivisions chose from their masters 
certain deans and proctors to look after matters of discipline. A univer- 
sity, even of the aristocratic type, was truly a " Republic of Letters." ^ 

181. Value of the Medieval University. — Uuiversity life and 
training grew more and more popular : the fourteenth century 
ssbw fifteen new universities founded ; the fifteenth century saw 
twenty-nine. Moreover, the number of students at the old 
foundations increased rapidly, and, according to contempo- 
rary authorities, from twelve to twenty thousand was not an 
uncommon attendance at a single institution.^ The work in 
the main was a slavish study of texts, and Latin continued to 
be the sole learned language.^ However, the mere bringing 
together so many youthful minds, glowing with desire for 
knowledge, tended to produce an intellectual tumultuousness ; 
and in theology, where the reason was sometimes allowed to 
speculate a little, university men were more ready than the 
rest of Europe to receive new ideas.* But in other lines of 
study, the method of instruction tended to produce an over- 
whelming respect for tradition and authority. The movement 
which produced the universities was a kind of prelude to the 
true Eenaissance of two centuries later : at the time the old 
habits of thought were too strong, and there was too little 
knowledge, for a successful intellectual revolution. Thus 
the universities were captured by the medieval spirit and 
became one of the most striking characteristics of '' medievalism.^' 
They do not belong to the true Renaissance. They became the 
strongholds of the "Schoolmen" (§§ 182-185). The new im- 
pulses of the fifteenth century, which were to carry Europe on 
into a broader intellectual life, did not arise within their walls 
and found admission at all only after stern struggles. 

1 Read Laurie, 167-170 and 195-199. 

2 No doubt, these figures are merely loose estimates and very great exaggera- 
tions, like most other medieval statements of numbers. 

8 This fact encouraged the practice of traveling from one university to another. 
Students who went from Paris to study at Bologna did not need a new language. 
* Wyclif, Huss, and Luther were all connected with university teaching. 



200 THE KENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 182 

B. Scholasticism. 

182. The " Scholastic Method." — The twelfth and thirteenth 

centuries, with their intellectual revival, developed a new and 
peculiar intellectual method. This became known as scholas- 
ticism, or the method of the schools. Its one weapon was the 
" formal logic " of Aristotle,^ which had never been quite for- 
gotten in Europe. This logic consisted in throwing knowledge 
into the form of "syllogisms." There are several kinds of 
syllogisms, but each contains three statements, of which the 
third, the "conclusion," follows irresistibly from the two 
" premises " : thus, — 

All A is part of B ; 
C is part of A ; 
therefore C is part of B. 

The intellectual effort in scholasticism lay in the selection and 
arrangement of suitable premises, and in stringing one syllogism 
to another, so as to build up into one system all the fragments 
of knowledge that the age possessed. These fragments were 
few and insignificant ; and the method of scholasticism could 
not discover new knowledge. At best it was suited only to 
test and to arrange, not to discover.^ And so, lacking other 
material, the Schoolmen turned in upon their own minds, and 
constructed huge systems of speculative philosophy, highly 
organized, but, apart from the mental gymnastics involved in 
constructing them, utterly barren for purposes of practical 
life. Scholasticism ignored the whole world of nature and 

1 Ancient History, § 207. 

2 This holds good, unless we call the development of geometrical truths 
out of a few axioms a discovery. Geometry is the kind of study for which 
the method of the Schoolmen is perfectlj^ fitted. The trouble with them was 
that they tried to apply that method to other kinds of study for which it was 
not fitted at all, or else they ignored those other studies. This drawing of 
conclusions from premises is deduction. Modern science employs this method, 
of course, but its first task is to establish the truth of its premises, and 
to collect great masses of them, by inductive methods (observation and 
experiment). 



§183] PRECEDING MOVEMENTS — SCHOLASTICISM 201. 

of men ; and it knew nothing of observation and experiment 
as means of study. 

About the year 1600, Francis Bacon (§ 199) very properly said : it 
was a "degenerate learning" that "did reign among tlie Schoolmen, . . . 
who did out of a great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit, 
spin out unto us those laborious webs. . . . For if the wit, and mind of 
men . . . work upon itself, as the spider worketli his web, then it is endless 
and bringeth forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness 
of thread and work, but of no substance or profit." — Advancement of 
Learning. 

With all its faults, however, scholasticism was the first 
effort of the awakening mind of Europe. Men had turned 
to seek knowledge in an unfortunate direction ; but they dis- 
played amazing eagerness. The disputations of the School- 
men developed power in making precise definitions and subtile 
distinctions ; ^ and it is difticult for us to comprehend the in- 
tellectual stir and enthusiasm that agitated Europe as a result 
of their speculations. Still, scholasticism is memorable as a 
striving, not as a product. Indeed, it not only could not of 
itself make progress, but in two ways it was actually to retard 
progress. It constructed so complete a speculative system that 
it had no room for new facts; and its system was so connected 
with theology that finally to question a philosophic theory 
was to incur the condemnation of the church. In character, 
as well as in time, scliolasticism belongs to medievalism, not to the 
Renaissance. 

183. Scholasticism and Theology. — The Schoolmen set to work 
to put the church doctrines into a logical system. The first 
great Schoolman in this sense was the Italian Anselm, whose 
life "was spent mainly as prior and teacher at the ISTorman 
monastery of Bee, and afterward as Archbishop of Canter- 
bury under William II and Henry I of England. Anselm 

1 It is easy to fling cheap witticisms at the Schoolmen for their disputes as 
to how many spirits could stand on the point of a needle. Criticism of this 
kind, however, shows ignorance of the real problem the Schoolmen had in 
hand, — in this case, the nature of space. 



/:i2 THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§184 

^ It that the highest exercise of the human reason was to 
shion clear statements about the divine truths previously 
cepted by faith, Man was not to question whether a given 

doctrine was true, but he might use his reason to learn why 

it was true. This Anselm said explicitly : — 

Whether that is true which the universal Church believes vs^ith the 
heart and confesses with the mouth, no Christian can be permitted to ques- 
tion ; but, while holding fast to it witliout doubting, and loving and liv- 
ing for this faith, he may and should search in humility for the grounds 
of this truth. If he is able to add to his faith, intelligence, let him thank 
God ; if not, let him not turn against his faith, but bow his head and 
worship. 

This came to be the general position of the Schoolmen, but not 
until after an interesting attempt to exalt human reason to 
a higher place. Abelard, the second great Schoolman, was a 
Frenchman of bold, restless intellect. He tried to use reason 
to test the truth of theological doctrines. He does not seem 
himself to have doubted the teachings of the church, but his 
appeals from all authority to reason as a sufficient guide, 
aroused the more devout and far-seeing churchmen. St. Ber- 
nard (§ 72, note) declared that not reason, but love and faith, 
enabled man to understand the ways of God. Abelard was 
condemned by church councils, and he recanted and burned 
his works. The earlier attitude of Anselm prevailed.^ 

184. Scholasticism and Science. — By the thirteenth century 
Europe had recovered other works of Aristotle besides his 
Logic, and the Schoolmen exercised themselves upon these 
writings also, but without in the least learning Aristotle's 

1 Another great division among the early Schoolmen was that into Nomi- 
nalists and Realists. One party urged, somewhat as Plato had done, that our 
general names, such as " virtue " and " tree," stand for real existences: the 
general, or universal, tree, these Realists held, exists in the divine mind, and 
all individual trees are merely manifestations of it ; virtue is an essence in 
itself, independent of all virtuous deeds and thoughts. The Nominalists 
held, on the other hand, that such terms are mere names for the qualities we 
mentally abstract from concrete deeds and trees : there are individual trees, 
but no general tree; there are virtuous persons, but no virtuous essence, 
independent of persons. 



§186] PRECEDING MOVEMENTS— ROGER BACON. 203 

method of scientific observation. Some little science did creep 
into Europe from the Arabs, especially astronomy and chem- 
istry. But the astronomy was mainly astrology, a system 
of fortune telling by the stars ; and the chemistry was largely 
a deluded search for the " philosopher's stone," which should 
transmute metals into gold, or for the elixir of life, a drink 
that should confer immortality. Men who dealt in either 
science, honestly or as quacks, were generally held to be 
wizards, who had sold their souls to the devil in return for 
forbidden knowledge. 

185. The Great Schoolmen of the Thirteenth Century. — The School- 
men, with their barren method, continued almost undisputed masters of 
the intellectual field through the thirteenth century. The three great 
names of the century are those of Albert the Great, Thomas of Aquino, 
and Duns the Scot. Albert (Albertus Magnus, died 1280) was a German 
Dominican friar who had studied at Bologna and at Paris. He mingled 
with his studies enough of curious speculation upon the properties of 
stones, plants, and animals to be accused of the "black art." Thomas 
Aquinas (died 1274) was an Italian Dominican, and a pupil of Albertus 
Magnus. He studied at Naples and Paris, and afterward lectured at 
Paris to immense audiences. His great work summing up Christian 
theology is the most complete of all such published systems and is still 
looked upon as a standard authority. Duns Scotus (died 1308) was 
among the last of the great Schoolmen. He was so popular that an able 
disputant was proud to be called " a Duns." When a better intellectual 
method arose, after the revival of Greek learning, the term became one of 
opprobrium. It survives in "dunce." 

186. Roger Bacon: a Forerunner of the Scientific Method. — The 

thirteenth century saw one memorable attempt to study nature 
in a scientific way. Friar Bacon^ (Englishman, died 1294) is 
sometimes called a Schoolman, but he spent his life in pointing 
out the lacks of the scholastic method and in trying to make 
clear the principles of scientific study. His "Great Work" 
was a cyclopedia of thirteenth century knowledge in geog- 

1 Roger Bacon, the thirteenth century friar, must not be confused with 
Francis Bacon, his more famous but no more deserving countryman, of three 
centuries later (§ 199) . 



204 THE EENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 186 

raphy, mathematics, music, and physics. Bacon wins more 
and more recognition from scholars now, but in his own day he 
was listened to only to be persecuted. He was a devoted stu- 
dent, working under difficulties incredible and incomprehensible 
to us. Fourteen years he spent in prison. More than once he 
sought all over Europe for years for a copy of a book, when a 
modern scholar under like wants would need only to send a 
note to the nearest bookseller. He learned of the ocean east 
of China, and speculated convincingly upon the feasibility of 
reaching Asia by sailing west into the Atlantic (§ 197). He 
knew much about chemical explosives, and is believed to have 
invented gunpowder. He is thought also to have used a com- 
bination of lenses as a telescope. Probably he foresaw the 
possibility of steam : certainly, he prophesied that in time 
wagons and ships would move swiftly without the help of 
horses or sails. In 1258, Brunetto Latini, the tutor of Dante, 
visited Roger Bacon and wrote as follows to a friend in Italy : — 

Among other things he showed me a black, ugly stone called a 
magnet, which has the surprising quality of drawing iron to it ; and if a 
needle be rubbed upon it and afterward fastened to a straw, so that it will 
swim upon water, it will instantly turn to the pole star. . . . Therefore, 
be the night never so dark, neither moon nor stars visible, yet shall the 
sailor by help of this needle be able to steer his vessel aright. This dis- 
covery so useful to all who travel by sea, must remain concealed until 
other times, because no master mariner dare iise it, lest he fall under im- 
putation of being a magician, nor would sailors put to sea with one who 
carried an instrument so evidently constructed by the devil. A time may 
come when these prejudices, such hindrances to researches into the secrets 
of nature, will be overcome ; and then mankind will reap benefits from 
the labor of such men as Friar Bacon, who now meet only with obloquy 
and reproach. 

Bacon's work deserved to introduce a new scientific era; but 
he found no followers. He lived at least a century too soon to 
influence the world about him. Scholasticism was to fall, not 
before his demonstration of its weakness, but through new 
popular needs and through the recovery of more of the knowl- 
edge of the Greeks than the scholastic system could hold. 



§ 187] LITERATURE — HUMANISM. 205 

For Further Reading. — (1) On Universities : Sources : Penn- 
sylvania Beprints, II, No. 3, contains much valuable information con- 
cerning "the Medieval Student"; Henderson's Documents, 262-266, 
gives the foundation charter of the University of Heidelberg. Modern 
accounts: Laurie's i^ise of Universities; Compayre's ^6e?arcZ; Jessopp's 
Friars (ch. vi, "The Building up of a University") ; Mullinger's Cam- 
bridge (chs. i-iii) ; Brodrick's Oxford; and Rashdall's Universities in the 
Middle Ages (for advanced students only). 

(2) On Scholasticism : Rashdall and Compayr^, as above ; Stille's 
Studies (ch. xiii) ; Poole's Medieval Thought; Church's Anselm; Mori- 
son's Bernard; and Storrs' Bernard. 

in. LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS. 

A. Literature : Humanism. 

187. From 8oo to 1300 : Latin Chronicles. — From the eightli 
century to the thirteenth, practically all writing in Western 
Europe was in Latin, and was therefore the possession of 
a small class. ^ Various spoken dialects had arisen from the 
mixture of Eoman and Teutonic elements, but these were not 
yet the vehicle of literature. The Latin, too, was a crude 
and barbarous jargon, very unlike the polished diction of 
Cicero. The only writers were monks, and the writings con- 
sisted almost exclusively of the Lives of saints and of barren 
chronicles concerned mostly with narrow local interests. 

These monkish chronicles form a large part of the material upon which 
the historian has to draw for his knowledge of several centuries, but their 
use is made exceedingly difficult by several characteristics. 

a. The chroniclers usually lacked all sense of historical proportion. 
They cared more about the acquisition of the wonder-working bones of 
some saint by a monastery, or the election of a new abbot, than about a 
great war or the coronation of a new monarch ; while the deeper forces in 
a people's life they seem not to have thought of at all.2 

1 For some centuries, knowledge belonged so exclusively to the clergy that 
a man had only to show an ability to read, in order to establish his right to 
"benefit of clergy " (§ 69). 

2 The Anglo Saxon Chronicle has this entry for the important year of 1066 
in England: " In this year King Edward died, and Earl Harold succeeded to 



206 THE KENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 188 

b. They were incredibly credulous. What are intended for sober his- 
torical narratives are interfused, in perfect good faith, with the wildest 
stories of miracles. Indeed, the more marvelous a story, the more eagerly 
the writer seized upon it and the less likely he was to question its truth. 

c. They seem not to have distinguished clearly between the purposes 
of history and fiction. Most of the historical narratives partook of the 
nature of our "historical fiction." Even the contemporary accounts of 
the crusades, though earnest histories in form, were intended not so much 
to state exact truth as to amuse noble patrons by fable or by lively inven- 
tion or by flattery. 

d. They were oftentimes quite ready to forge a history or a charter 
for a pious purpose. A considerable portion of the official documents 
and charters preserved through the Middle Ages have been proved to be 
more or less clumsy forgeries. ^ 

188. Rise of Vernacular Literatures in the Thirteenth Century. 

— Even after tlie tliirteeutli century, Latin continued to be the 
chief language of science and philosophy. But poets and story- 
tellers needed to use the speech of the common people. This 
had been done all along by the minstrels, who, as wandering 
adventurers or as retainers of some lord, formed a characteris- 
tic part of medieval life ; and after 1200 there arose in various 
lands a popular poetry that began to deserve the name of lit- 
erature. Spanish ballad poets chanted the Song of the Cid 
(commemorating the national hero in the conflict with the 
Moors). In the language of northern Prance, the trouveurs 
celebrated the adventures of Charlemagne and Roland or of 
King Arthur and his Table Round. In the softer language of 
the south of France (Languedoc) the troubadours sang of love, 
as did a like class of poets, the minnesingers, in Germany. 
Similar songs were written in the dialect of southern Italy at 
the Sicilian court of Frederick II (§ 85).^ In the north of Europe 

the kingdom and held it forty weeks and one day. And in this year William 
came and won England. And in this year Christ Church was burned. And 
in this year a comet appeared." 

1 Cf. Ancient History, § 635, with reference to the " Donation of Con- 
stantine," the most famous forgery of the age. 

2 But in the next generation, Dante's Divine Comedy made his Tuscan 
dialect the literary language for the whole of Italy. 



§189] LITERATURE — HUMANISM. 207 

the Scandinavian poets wove the ancient Norse ballads and 
legends into a mighty mythic epic, the Heimskringla, — as the 
Germans also had done with their early legends, in the Nibel- 
vAigen Lied. England was more backward, because of the new 
language imposed for a while by her jSTorman conquerors. The 
Anglo Saxon Chronicle, it is true, did not quite die out until 
the close of Stephen's reign, and soon afterward rude popular 
songs celebrated the deeds of Earl Simon; but not until the 
fourteenth century did popular poetry of a high order awaken 
in that island. Finally, toward the close of the century, in the 
Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, 'Hhe Father of English Poetry," 
accomplished the fusion of the Saxon and the Norman French 
into a literary English, while at almost the same time Wyclif 
translated the Bible into the common tongue. 

Like the thirteenth century university and the Schoolmen, 
the tronbadours and minnesingers loere characteristically medie- 
val. But this rise of native literary languages was a necessary 
prelude to any wide-spread knowledge or to any true national 
movements. Now that each country had in its own language 
a fit means for scholars to use, it was possible to attack the 
medieval system in science and theology with a chance of 
popular support. 

189. The Literary Renaissance. — The Renaissance began in 
Italy, and began in literature even sooner than in painting. 
Italy was the natural home for such a movement. Italy's 
Vergil had been read by a few scholars all through the Middle 
Ages, and had dominated literary ideals almost as completely 
as Aristotle's Logic had dominated philosophy. The Italian 
language was nearer the Latin, too, than was that of any 
other country, and probably more of the manuscripts of the 
ancient Eoman writers survived in Italy than elsewhere. 

Three names are commonly associated with the Italian lit- 
erary Eenaissance,— Dante (1265-1321), Petrarch (1304-1374), 
and Boccaccio (1313-1375), — all citizens of Florence. The 
greatest of the three was Dante (§ 188) ; but, after all, Dante's 
thought belonged to the Middle Ages : it is only in his inde- 



208 THE EENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 189 

pendence and self-reliance that lie prophesied a new era. 
Petrarch, in the next generation, was the conscious champion 
of a new age. In feeling and aspiration he belonged wholly 
to the Eenaissance, — which he did much to bring to pass. 
His graceful sonnets are a famous part of Italian literature, 
but his chief influence upon the world lay in his work as a 
tireless critic of the medieral system and as an ardent advo- 
cate of classical ideals. He attacked vehemently the supersti- 
tions and the false science of the day ; he ridiculed the mighty 
tomes of the Schoohnen as " heaps of worthless rubbish " ; the 
universities themselves he laughed at as "nests of gloomy 
ignorance " ; and he ventured daringly even to challenge the 
infallibility of Aristotle, — who, he said, was after all " only 
a man." 

But Petrarch did more than merely to destroy. It was 
desirable that the world should recover what the Ancients had 
possessed of art and knowledge, that it might take up progress 
again where they had left off. Petrarch began an enthusiastic 
search for classical manuscripts, and his disciples soon made 
this zeal fashionable throughout Italy. 

Among these disciples the most famous was Boccaccio, nine years 
Petrarch's junior. He is widely famed as the writer of the Decameron, 
a collection of a hundred tales, which made him the father of Italian prose, 
as Dante was of Italian poetry ; but, as in the case of Petrarch, Boccac- 
cio's real worth to the world lay mainly in the impulse he added to the 
revival of classical learning. 

After Boccaccio, Italian literature declined" suddenly for almost two 
centuries, probably because enthusiasm was directed rather to painting 
and sculpture. Not until the close of the Renaissance did Italy again 
produce great authors, — in the poets Tasso dMd Ariosto. But meantime, 
as we shall see (§ 195), scientific study began in this southern land; and 
it should be added that the Florentine Machiavelli, in his famous work 
The Prince (about 1513), began the modern study of politics. 

The new enthusiasm for the classics became known as humanism 
(Latin humanitas, culture). "Within seventy years of Petrarch's death, 
or before 1450, the Humanists had recovered practically all the literary 
remains we now have of the Latin authors and a large part of the surviv- 
ing Greek manuscripts. Oftentimes the neglected manuscripts were 



§ 191] LITEEATURE — HUMANISM. 209 

found decaying in moldy vaults. Many had been mutilated, or had been 
erased in order that the parchment might receive some monastic legend.^ 
Much had been wholly lost ; and if the humanistic revival had been 
a little longer delayed, a great deal that we now possess would never have 
been recovered. 

190. Recovery of the Greek Language. — With all their zeal 
for Greek manuscripts and Latin translations of them, the 
early Humanists were ignorant of the Greek language; but 
after about the year 1400, the knowledge of that tongue grevt^ 
rapidly. Greek scholars were invited to the Italian cities and 
were given professorships in the universities. The increasing 
danger in the Greek Empire from the Turk made such invita- 
tions acceptable, and the high prices paid by princely Italian 
collectors drew more and more of the literary treasures of Con- 
stantinople to the Italian , cities. Many a fugitive scholar 
from the East found the possession of some precious manu- 
script the key to fortune and favor in Italy.^ 

191. The Place of Humanism in the History of Education. — At first, 
■ humanism had been stoutly resisted by the universities, especially outside 

Italy, but it finally captured them and established a "new education." 
The earlier " liberal education " had contained no Greek and had given 
little acquaintance with the Latin authors. The courses in " arts" were 
now broadened so as to furnish a true classical training. Monkish Latin 
was replaced by the refined style of Cicero, and the barren and often 
misleading " compendiums " in earlier use were supplanted by a fuller 
knowledge of the great works of classical antiquity at first hand. From 
that time to the present day the classics have held a prominent place in 
educational systems, — until recently, almost an exclusive place. 

The value of this recovery of the past cannot be overstated. Greek 
thought and knowledge and the grand and beautiful conceptions of Greek 
and Latin literature have been gradually absorbed into our modern 
thought and literature, which they still color. But merely as concerned 
the system of education, the change was less revolutionary than at first 
appeared. The spirit of the Schoolmen survived in the schools strongly 

1 In some cases this later writing has since been carefully removed, and 
the original writing restored faintly, through chemical processes. 

2 The value of such a manuscript furnishes an essential element in the plot 
of George Eliot's Romola. 



210 THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 192 

enough to conquer the conquerors. The originality and independence of 
the early Humanists was soon exchanged in the universities for servile 
imitation and dependence upon authority. Cicero became almost as 
great an intellectual tyrant as Aristotle had been. The study of the 
classics took on an unwholesome formalism, from which it had to be 
rescued much later by a new scientific movement. 



B. The Fine Arts. 

192. Medieval Painting and Architecture. — Classical art had 
been as completely lost through the early Middle Ages as 
classical learning. Medieval art existed only as the handmaid 
of religion. Monks " illuminated " missals and other religious 
books, — painting with tiny brushes in brilliant colors on 
parchment, — and they designed gay page-borders and initial 
letters, sometimes with beauty and delicacy. On a larger scale, 
the only paintings were rude altar pieces, representing stiff 
Madonnas and saints, in conventional and unnatural colors. 
The painters knew little of either anatomy or perspective ; and 
even the flowing draperies which they used freely could not 
hide their ignorance of how to draw the human body. 

Architecture, too, until the twelfth century, was relatively 
poor and rude. The style was the Bomanesque, based upon 
old Roman remains and characterized by the round arch. The 
only buildings of any pretension, aside from the massive feudal 
castles, were churches, and the general plan for these was fur- 
nished by the old basilica.^ But in the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, the Romanesque gave way to a new French style, 
called Gothic; and architecture, especially in churches and 
cathedrals, reached one of its greatest periods. The older ele- 
ments were all used, but with marvelous transformations and 
with important additions. Gothic architecture modified the 
round arch into the lighter pomted arch, and it used the old Greek 
column with a new freedom and variety, adding lofty, curiously 
vaulted ceilings. It substituted the toioer for the dome, and 

1 Ancient History, § 488. 



§192] 



PRECEDING MEDIEVAL ART. 



2H 




Illustration from a Late Medieval Manuscript (fifteenth century), 
showing in the foreground Maximilian of Austria, Mary of Burgundy, 
and their son Philip. — After Lacroix, Fie Militaire. 



212 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. 



[§192 



added, perhaps from the Saracens, heaven-pointing spires. By 
the use of the new flying buttress, strength was gained, so that 
it became safe to pierce the walls with row upon row of tall 
windows, giving the effect of lightness and complexity. New 
opportunities for ornament were found in the tracery, or open- 



^1 



■ :^'U- 




Salisbury Cathedral, from the southeast ; built, 1200-1250. The spire 
rises 404 feet from the ground. — From Cathedral Churches of England. 

ings in the stonework about doors and windows, in the mold- 
ings of the window frames, and in the use of stained glass} 
The total result was a new architecture, so different from 



^ Sculptured figures were used, also, to fill the niches about the portals, but 
they were the robed forms of saints carved rudely in stone, not the marble- 
sculptured bodies of athletes in which ancient art had delighted. 



§192] PRECEDING ART — GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 213 

the older styles as to permit little comparison. Gothic archi- 
tecture indeed is the most perfect product of the Middle Ages, 




Salisbury Cathedral. View from south to north transept. — From 
Cathedral Churches of England. 

and a Gothic cathedral is one of the wonders of the world 
to-day. Such structures could have been reared only in an 
age of intense faith and spiritual longing, and they form the 



214 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. 



[§193 




finest expression of the Mghest life of the time. They are 
religious aspirations in stone. 

193. Renaissance Art. — Architecture was the one beautiful 
thing that suffered at the Renaissance, when the noble Gothic 
was replaced by imitations of the older Roman and Greek 
styles. In painting and sculpture, on the contrary, there was 
great gain. These arts were reborn into the world, with the 

rebirth of a delight in 
life; and painting, at least, 
reached a perfection never 
before known. 

This was particularly 
true in Italy. Inthatland, 
with so many remains of 
ancient art still preserved, 
or buried in the soil and 
now eagerly sought for, 
the new movement became 
preeminently artistic. Art 
dominated the whole peo- 
ple, not merely a select few. Great popular processions did 
honor to single paintings, and famous works were produced in 
an abundance almost inconceivable. 

The new artistic impulse is usually dated from the work of Giotto., early 
in the fourteenth century, but Italian painting culminated in the eighty 
years from 1470 to 1550. Between these dates came the work of Perugino, 
the Bellini., Fra Bartolommeo, Michael Angela, Raphael, Giorgione, Cor- 
reggio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Leonardo da Vinci, and Tintoretto. Each 
town had its able artists, but nearly all the greatest masters, like most of 
those just named, belonged to Florence or to Venice. Many of these 
men practised more than one art. Thus Michael Angelo was great as 
architect and sculptor as well as painter, and he was not without fame as 
a poet. 

Until about 1450, the paintings were mainly frescoes, or paintings upon 
plastered ceilings, in churches or palaces. But one of the Van Eyck 
brothers in Holland, about the middle of the fifteenth century, invented 
new methods of preparing oil paints, so that painting upon canvas became 
possible. About the same time, engraving of copper plates and the use 



The Cloistees, Salisbury Cathedral. 



§193] 



RENAISSANCE ART. 



215 




Cathedral of Rheims. 



of woodcuts came into use, — to do for works of art something of what 
the invention of printing was about to do for books. 

The great period of Dutch art was to come a little later, between 1600 
and 1660, with Buhens, Van Dyck, and Bembrandt. In the same century 



216 



THE EENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. 



t§194 



came the great Spanish painters, Velasquez (1599-1660) and Murillo 
(1618-1682). The other great painters of the renaissance age outside of 
Italy were the Germans Albert JDurer (1471-1528) and Holbein (1498- 
1543). Neither England nor France produced much in this direction dur- 
ing these centuries. France did have her Poussin (1594-1655) ; and 

some of the great Italians — 
Andrea del Sarto and Leo- 
nardo — found their chief pat- 
ronage in Paris from Francis 
I, just as a century later the 
English sovereigns entertained 
Holbein, Rubens, and Van 
Dyck. 

194. The Pagan Side of 
the Italian Renaissance. — 

There was an evil side 
to the Eenaissance. The 
men of the new move- 
ment, having cast off old 
restraints and beliefs, fell 
often into gross and shal- 
low skepticism and into 
shameless self-indulgence 
and sensuality. Religious 
faith and private morals 
both declined, and for a 
time Italian society sank 
lower than the old Pagan 
world. 

The north of Europe was saved, in the main, from this phase 
of the Renaissance by a greater moral earnestness and by the 
fact that in the north the movement was more purely intellec- 
tual and less artistic and sensuous than in Italy. 




Chukch of Saint-Maclou at Rouen; 
fifteenth century. 



§195] 



THE NEW LEARNING. 



217 



IV. THE NEW" LEARNING. 

195. A Scientific Study of " Sources " for a Knowledge of Early 
Christianity. — The purely intellectual side of the Renaissance 
manifested itself first in a new historical attitude — in a desire 
to get at the real sources of the knowledge of past centuries, and 
in a critical treatment of cor- 
rupted or forged documents. 
Plainly, this new historical 
criticism was akin to the 
enthusiasm of the Hu- 
manists for the recovery of 
faithful copies of classical 
writings ; but it was also re- 
lated to a fervent religious 
desire to remove abuses 
in the church and to get 
back to the spirit and prac- 
tices of primitive Christian- 
ity. Like other renaissance 
movements, historical criti- 
cism had its birth in Italy ; 
but it was to find its more 
abiding home north of the 
Alps. 

The first modern scholar 
with the critical scientific 




A Corner of the Ducal Palace, Ven- 
ice . Venetian Gothic (fourteenth cen- 
tury), influenced by Byzantine art. 



spirit was Laurentius Valla^ (died 1457), private secretary to 
Pope Nicholas V. Among other works. Valla edited the New 
Testament carefully in Greek, and he proved the falsity of the 
" Donation of Constantine." ^ 

1 If we except Roger Bacon (§ 186). Petrarch was rather a man of letters 
than a scholar, though he, too, showed much of this scientific spirit in dealing 
with old manuscripts. It is notable that Roger Bacon called attention to the 
need of recovery and translation of the documents of early Christianity. See 
Cambridge Modern History, I, 585-592. 

2 Ancient History, § 635. 



218 THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§196 

Valla's work was taken up by Johvi Colet, the Eiiglisliman, and 
by Erasmus, the Hollander. Colet studied in Italy, and, upon his 
return to England, lectured at Oxford upon the New Testament, 
treating it as an historical presentation of early Christianity. 
He influenced a considerable group of enthusiastic followers. 
The most important of them was Erasmus, whose influence 
was not confined to any one country, but was European in 
extent. In 1516, Erasmus published the New Testament in 
Greek and in Latin, with the text carefully revised and with 
critical notes. Afterward he edited the writings of many of 
the early Christian Fathers. In another class of works, — TJie 
Colloquies and The Praise of Folly, — with unsurpassed wit 
and graceful ridicule he lashed the false methods and the folly 
of the monks and the Schoolmen, and so prepared society to 
turn to the serious constructive side of the " New Learning." 

Erasmus has been called " the Scholar of the Reformation," 
and he did furnish Luther with much material ready for use ; 
but he was not himself a revolutionist. Like Valla and Colet, 
he worked only for reform within the church. 

196. Inventions. — The new intellectual movement was 
marked by a number of new inventions or by the first prac- 
tical applications of them. Four demand special attention. 

a. Gunpowder had been known for over a century, but its 
first serious use was in the wars between Charles V and 
Erancis I, about 1521. This invention gave the final blow to 
the already dying feudalism. 

6. Printing was to do more to advance the new order than 
gunpowder could do to destroy the old. The invention of print- 
ing from movable type came at a happy moment, just when 
the Humanists had fairly completed their recovery of ancient 
manuscripts. The invention is claimed for different people and 
places ; but the first effective process seems to have been that 
practised by John Gutenberg at Mainz in Germany, about 1450.-' 

1 Special report: ancient " printing " from seals and blocks, especially in 
China, and the development in Germany of movable type of one size (cf. 
Whitcomb's Modern Europe, 28, 29, for an admirable brief statement). 



§197] GEOGKAPHICAL DISCOVERIES. 219 

In less than twenty-five years, printing presses were at work 
in every country in Southwestern Europe, and, before 1500, 
Venice alone had sent out over three thousand editions of 
famous books. No previous invention had spread its influence 
so rapidly. The new process seems to have reduced the price 
of books by four-fifths at once, and so, of course, it enor- 
mously increased their circulation. It preserved the precious 
works recovered by the Humanists, and spread broadcast the 
new thought of the Eeformation (§§ 205 ff.). 

c. The telescope (§ 198) gave knowledge of other worlds. 

d. The mariner's compass more than doubled the area of the 
known globe, and shifted the stage of historical action. 

197. Geographical Discoveries.^ — The Ancients had played 
with the notion of sailing around the earth. Aristotle speaks of 
" persons " who held that it might be possible ; Eratosthenes ^ 
feared that the great expanse of ocean could not be traversed ; 
and Strabo ^ suggested that one or more continents might lie in 
the Atlantic between Europe and Asia. 

During the Eoman period, however, no great motive had 
impelled men to make trial of these guesses, and during the 
Middle Ages a different geographical theory had gained con- 
trol. Men had come to believe that the known habitable earth 
was bounded on all sides by an uninhabitable and untraversa- 
ble world, — on the north by snow and ice, on the south by a 
fiery zone, on the west by watery wasises stretching down an 
inclined plane, up which men might not return, and on the 
east by a dim land of fog and fen, the abode of strange and 
terrible monsters.* The Indian Ocean, too, was thought to be 
a lake encompassed by the shores of Asia and Africa. 

The first step in the discovery of America and in the other 
marvelous explorations of the fifteenth century lay in the cor- 
rection of these views. This was accomplished in part by a 

iSee Fiske's Discovery of America or Payne's History of the ISFew World. 
2 Ancient History, § 259. 3 Ancient History, § 491. 

4 For some of these ideas, see the curious and interesting Travels of Sir 
John Mandeville (thirteenth century). 



220 THE RENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 197 

better geographical knowledge of Asia, which was acquired in 
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Louis IX of France 
sent Priar Rubruquis as ambassador to the court of the Tartar 
Khan in central Asia ; and the friar on his return reported 
that he had heard of a navigable ocean east of Cathay (China), 
with a marvelously wealthy island, Zipango (Japan). This 
rumor of a navigable ocean to the east made a leap in men's 
thought. Eriar Bacon in England (§ 186) at once raised the 
question whether it might not be the same ocean as the one 
that washed Europe on the west and whether men might 
not reach Asia by sailing west into the Atlantic. Indeed, 
Bacon wrote a book to support these conjectures, adding many 
opinions of the Ancients; and extensive extracts from this 
volume were copied into a later book, which was to become a 
favorite of Columbus'.^ 

Moreover, the Mongol emperors (§ 168) helped indirectly to 
give Europe true geographical ideas. They opened China to 
western strangers to a degree altogether new for that land, 
and, while their dominion lasted, many strangers and merchants 
visited the East. Among these were three Venetians, the Polos, 
who on their return sailed from Pekin through the straits into 
the Indian Ocean and up the Persian Gulf. Tliis proved true 
the rumor of Ruhruquis regarding an eastern ocean, and proved 
also that the Indian Ocean was not landlocked."^ 

Erom this time it was possible to think seriously of reaching 
India by sailing west; and soon afterward commercial condi- 



1 Such speculation implies that scholars understood the sphericity of the 
earth. See Ancient History, §§ 259, 540, for the origin of this knowledge and 
for its temporary loss .to Christendom. Saracenic schools, however, preserved 
the truth, and sonu European thinkers had heen familiar with it, even in the 
"Dark Ages." 

2 Travelers in that age did not often write descriptions of their travels. 
One of these Polos, however, being captured, soon after his return, in a sea 
fight between Venice and Genoa, remained a prisoner in Genoa for some years ; 
and the stories that he told of his adventures were written down by one of his 
fellow captives. Thus was made " The Book of Ser Marco Polo," one of the 
most widely read books of the later Middle . 



§197] GEOGEAPHICAL DISCOVERIES. 221 

tions changed so as to impel men earnestly to the attempt. 
The crusades had given a new impulse to trade with the Orient, 
untiLmany eastern products were become almost necessities of 
daily life to Europe (§ 103) ; but in the fifteenth century, the 
progress of the Ottoman Turks threatened the old trade-routes. 
Constantinople, the emporium for the route by the Black Sea, 
finally fell into their hands, and each year their power crept 
further along the coast of Asia Minor and Palestine, endanger- 
ing the remaining route by the Eed Sea. Under these circum- 
stances the question was forced home to Europe whether or not 
a new route could be found ; and the speculations of Bacon and 
the discoveries of the Polos pointed to an answer. 

The Portuguese, under Prince Henry the Navigator, had 
already been engaged in building up a Portuguese empire in 
Africa and in the islands of the Atlantic (Azores, C?.nary, and 
Verde ^ ) ; and about 1470 they began to attempt the circum- 
navigation of Africa, In 1486, a Portuguese captain, Bartholo- 
mew Diaz, while engaged in this attempt, was carried far to 
the south in a storm, and on his return to the coast he found 
it on his left hand as he moved toward the north. He followed 
it several hundred miles, well into the Indian Ocean, when his 
sailors compelled him to turn back to Portugal. India was 
not actually reached until the expedition of Vasco da Gama in 
1498, after more memorable voyages in another direction. 

One of the sailors with Diaz in 1486, when in this way he 
rounded the Cape of "Good Hope," was a Bartholomew 
Columbus, whose brother Christopher had also sailed on several 
of the Portuguese voyages, but now for some years had de- 
voted himself to the more daring theory that India could be 
reached by sailing west into the open Atlantic. Portugal, well 
content with her monopoly of African exploration, refused to 
assist Columbus to try his plan, and Henry VII of England 
declined to furnish him ships ; but finally Isabella of Castile, 



1 The name " Cape Verde " indicates the surprise of the discoverers (1450) 
at verdure so far south. 



222 THE KENAISSANCE, 1350-1550. [§ 198 

while the siege of Granada was in progress, fitted out his small 
fleet, and in 1492 Columbus added America to the possessions 
of Spain. 

The marvels of the new regions of the earth, so disclosed, 
added mightily to the intellectual stir of the times. For a 
century or two, however, the immediate material gain was con- 
fined to the two countries which had begun the explorations. 
The Mediterranean trade decayed and the Italian cities lost 
their commercial importance ; but Portugal built up a great 
and wealthy empire in the Indian Ocean and in the adjoining 
islands of the Pacific, while Spain acquired the wealth of 
Mexico and Peru, and poured forth multitudes of adventurers 
to create a new Spain in America. 

198. Physical Science. — The new scientific methods which 
Valla and Erasmus had applied to history and theology, were 
applied a little later to the natural sciences. The first great 
representative of this movement was the Polish astronomer 
Copernicus. The universally accepted system of astronomy 
was that of Ptolemy.^ The earth was believed to be the center 
of the universe, and all the apparent movements of the sun 
and stars were explained by complex theories as to their rota- 
tion about the earth. Copernicus proved that the earth was 
only one member of a solar system which had the sun for its 
center. This discovery not only revolutionized the particular 
science of astronomy : it also helped to revolutionize thought 
about man and the world, by opening up such immensities of 
worlds and such possibilities of other forms of life as had 
never before been dreamed of. 

When the M'ork of Copernicus was printed (1543),^ the long 
series of devastating wars between Catholic and Protestant 
Europe was just beginning (§ 211). These wars were to have 
Germany for their especial battle ground, and for a long time 
they destroyed all chance of scientific or literary development 

1 Ancient History, § 492. 

2 Copernicus, from fear of persecution, delayed the publication of his dis- 
covery many years, until just before bis death. 



§199] PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 223 

in that country. In another way the great struggle repressed 
scientific thought, even more completely, in the Catholic coun- 
tries. At the opening of the Renaissance, the popes had been 
among the most active patrons of the new movement; but 
now the reaction against Protestant revolt threw control into 
conservative hands, and the church used its tremendous power 
to stifle the teachings of the new science. 

Still, much was accomplished. In Italy, Galileo (1564-1642) 
discovered the laws of the pendulum and of falling bodies, 
invented the thermometer, and, using a hint from a Holland 
plaything, constructed the first real telescope. He had already 
adopted the Copernican theory of the uniyerse, and with his 
telescope he was able to demonstrate its truth by showing 
the " phases " of Yenus in her revolution about the sun. His 
teachings, however, were considered dangerous and unsup- 
ported by scripture. He was summoned to Eome, imprisoned, 
and forced publicly to abjure his teaching that the earth moved 
around the sun.^ G-alileo's contemporary, the German Kepler, 
making use of the observations of the Danish astronomer, 
Tycho Brahe, established the exact laws of the motions of the 
planets ; and in England, a little later. Sir Isaac Newton stated 
the law of gravitation. 

199. England and the Renaissance. — England was a relatively 
poor and barbarous country, and had lagged behind in the 
early movements of the Renaissance. But about 1600, in the 
reign of Elizabeth, that land began to take a leading place 
both in science and in literature. Shortly after 1600 Harvey 
laid the basis for a true study of medicine by the discoveiy of 
the way in which the blood circulates,^ and Napier widened the 



1 The story is told that as Galileo rose from his knees after making his 
recantation, he whispered to a friend, " But it does move, nevertheless." 

2 The history of this discovery illustrates strikingly the slow progress of 
new ideas in past times, as compared with the ready welcome given them in 
our own day. In earlier centuries it had been believed that the bright blood 
of the arteries and the dark blood of the veins were two distinct systems, one 
coming from the heart, and the other from the liver. Half a century before 



224 ENGLAND AND THE RENAISSANCE. [§ 199 

application of matliematics by the invention of logarithms. 
At about the same time, Francis Bacon, statesman and philos- 
opher, in his essays and especially in his Novum Organum, 
called the attention of the world to the necessity of true 
scientific methods of observation and experiment and induc- 
tion. However, the real glory of the Elizabethan age was the 
English drama, with Shalcspere for its foremost representative, 
among such other great authors as Marlowe, Greene, Beaumont, 
Fletcher, and Ben Jonson.* Another form of English poetry 
in the same age is represented by Spenser's Fairy Queen. 

For Eurther Reading. — For Division II, see page 205. For Divi- 
sions I, III, and IV, the following works may be used, particularly by 
advanced students : Adams' Civilization, 364-391 ; Lodge's Close of the 
Middle Ages, 515-523 ; Pearson's Symond''s Short History of the Benais- 
sance; Robinson and Rolf's Petrarch; Emerton's Erasmus; Froude's 
Erasmus; Foo\e''s Illustrations of Medieval Thought; Beazley's Prince 
Henry; Winsov''s Columbus ; The Cambridge Modern History,!. Saints- 
bury's Flourishing of Bomance is a delightful treatment of medieval liter- 
ature. Liibke's History of Art is particularly good for the medieval period ; 
and Moore's Gothic Architecture is excellent. In fiction, Reade's Cloister 
and Hearth and George Eliot's Bomola picture renaissance movements. 



Harvey's time, the identity of the two systems had been discovered, together 
with the purification of the dark blood in the lungs, and with a full under- 
standing of the functions of the heart. The discoverer was Servetus, a young 
Spanish physician. But Servetus, who held opinions regarding the Trinity 
somewhat like those of modern Unitarians, was put to death for heresy (§ 217). 
It chanced that he had announced his medical discovery about the blood in 
the book in which he published his heretical opinions in theology ; and his 
persecutors sought out the copies of this book, to burn them, so zealously that 
only two copies have survived. Thus the great discovery seems to have 
received no attention, until it was made again, independently, by Harvey, 
fifty years later. Even then it was not at once accepted, though its truth 
could be so easily demonstrated. A fierce controversy raged over it, inas- 
much as it had not been taught by the Ancients; and, as late as 1700, it was 
solemnly questioned at Harvard College. 

1 No attempt is made to treat this topic of Elizabethan literature, because 
high school students will probably give much more attention to it in other 
classes than is possible here. 



PAET II. 

THE PERIOD OP MONAKOHIO STATES, 1520-1789. 



CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 

I. THE MAIN LINES OF DEVELOPMENT. 

200. As we enter upon the later centuries of modern history, the 
story grows more and- more complex. There is a confusing multitude of 
actors, and important events crowd upon one another in a bewildering 
maze. To secure a clear view we must fix our attention upon a few great 
movements and characteristics. Those most demanding notice in the 
three centuries between the Renaissance and the French Revolution are : — ■ 

1. The Protestant Reformation (the religious revolution), 1520-1648. 

2. The struggle in England between Parliament and the Stuart despotism, 

1603-1688. 

3. The predominance of France under the absolutism of Louis XIV, 

1643-1715. 

4. The changes in the political map of Europe in the first half of the 

eighteenth century : rise of Russia and Prussia (Peter the Great 
and Frederick the Great) and decline of Sweden and Poland. 

5. Reform by benevolent despots in the second half of the eighteenth 

century. 

6. The changes in the world-map : the eighteenth century struggle for 

world- empire between England and France, 1690-1783. 

IL TABLE OF SOVEREIGNS OF LEADING STATES, 

201. Spain. 

Charles 7, 1516-1556 (Emperor Charles V, 1519-1556) : the Reformation 
in Germany and the rivalry of France prevents the conquest *of 
Europe ; abdicated in favor of his son. 
225 



226 MONARCHIC STATES, 1520-1789. [§202 

Philip 11, 1556-1598 : revolt of the Netherlands ; "Invincible Armada." 

Philip III, 1598-1621 : expulsion of the Moriscoes. 

Philip IV, 1621-1665. 

Charles II, 1665-1700 : last of the Spanish Hapsburgs. 

Philip V, 1700-1746 : first Spanish Bourbon (§ 261). 

Ferdinand VI, 1746-1759. 

Charles III, 1759-1788, brother of Ferdinand. 

Charles IV, 1788-1808: seizure of Spain by Napoleon (§ 367). i 

202. Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and Archdukes of Austria. 

Charles V, 1519-1556 (Charles I of Spain). 

Ferdinand I, brother of Charles, 1556-1564: added Bohemia to the 

Hapsburg realms by marriage with Anne of Bohemia. 
Maximilian II, 1564-1576. 
Rudolph II, 1576-1612. 
Mathias, 1612-1619, brother of Rudolph. 
Ferdinand II, 1619-1637, cousin of Rudolph. 
Ferdinand III, 1637-1657. 
Leopold I, 1658-1705. 
Joseph I, 1705-1711. 

Charles VI, 1711-1740 : brother of Joseph I ; died without male heir. 
Ctiarles VII, of Bavaria, 1742-1745 : a fugitive much of his short reign ; 

war with Maria Theresa. 
Francis I (of Lorraine), 1745-1765: husband of Maria Theresa 

(daughter of Charles VI and Archduchess of Austria). 
Joseph II, 1765-1790 : son of Maria Theresa ; restoration of the Hapsburg 

line. 
Leopold II, 1790-1792 (brother of Joseph). 

Francis II, 1792-1806 : Empire ends ; " Emperor of Austria," 1804-1835. 
Ferdinand I (the "First" because "Emperor of Austria"), 1835-1848. 
Francis Joseph I : nephew of Ferdinand ; became emperor, 1848. 



203. France. 

Francis I, 1515-1547. 

Henry II, 1547-1559 : followed 

by his three weak sons ; 
Francis II (1559-1560), 
Charles IX (1560-1574), 
Henry III (1574-1589): 



these four reigns a period of re- 
ligious civil war ; Catherine of 
lledici, the Queen-mother," the 
evil genius of the last three 
reigns. 



1 Charles died in France before the overthrow of Napoleon. The subsequent 
rulers of Spain are named in §§ 495-499. 



§204] SOVEREIGNS OF LEADING STATES. 227 

Henry IV, 1589-1610 : cousin of the preceding kings and the Jlrst 

Bourbon king ; Edict of Nantes. 
Louis XIII, 1610-1643 : rule of BicheUeu. 
Louis XIV, 1643-1715 : rule of Mazarin during the King's minority ; 

wars and foreign conquests ; supremacy of France in Europe ; 

revocation of Edict of Nantes. 
Louis XV, 1715-1774, great-grandson of Louis XIV. 
Louis XVI, 1774-1792 : grandson of Louis XV ; the Revolution.^ 

204. England. 

a. Tudors. 
Henry VIII, 1509-1547 : son of the first Tudor king, Henry VII 

(§ 147) ; separates Church of England from Rome ; followed in 

succession by his three children. 
Edward VI, 1547-1553. 
Mary, 1553-1558 ; Catholic reaction. 
Elizabeth, 1558-1603. 

6. Stuarts. 
James I, 1603-1625. 

Charles I, 1625-1649 : civil war ; execution. 
( The Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660.) 
Charles II, 1660-1685. 
James II, 1685-1688. 
The '■'■ Glorious Bevolution'" of 1688. 

c. House of Orange. 

William ///and Mary, 1689-1702 (Mary died in 1694). 

d. The Last Stuart. 

Anne, second daughter of James II, 1702-1714. 

e. Hanoverians ("WeKs : House of Brunswick). 
George I, 1714-1727. 

George II, 1727-1760. 

George III, 1760-1820 (grandson of George II). 

George IV, 1820-1830. 

William IV, 1830-1837 (brother of George IV). 

Victoria, 1837-1901 (niece of William) : parliamentary government. 

Edward VII, 1901-. 

1 A table of the rulers and governments of France after 1792 may easily 
be made by the student from §§ 33S-377 and 402-444. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE AGE or THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 
1520-1648. 

I. THE RISE OF PROTESTANTISM. 

A. Luther and Germany. 

205. Martin Luther and the Abuse of "Indulgences." — The 

abuses within the church which called forth efforts for reform 
from Colet and Erasmus drove more impetuous spirits into 
complete revolt. This revolt was to divide Western Christen- 
dom into opposing camps for centuries. We call the move- 
ment the Protestant Reformation. Its leader was Martin 
Luther (1483-1546), son of a Thuringian peasant. Luther 
was a straightforward, forceful man, with a blunt, homely 
manner that went straight to the heart. Erasmus addressed 
scholars ; Luther spoke to the people. He had become an 
Augustinian friar and a professor in the University of Witten- 
berg in Saxony. He was a born fighter, and, in 1517, at the 
age of thirty-four, he entered upon a struggle with Rome.^ 

Luther's revolt grew out of his opposition to the sale of 
" Indulgences." The theory of the church was, that the pope, 
as the representative of St. Peter, might, in reward for some 
pious act, remit the punishment in purgatory to a sinner who 
had truly repented and who had so far as possible atoned for 
his sins. The ignorant multitude, however, unable to read the 
Latin documents, thought that the " Letters of Indulgence " 
promised unconditional pardon ; and this unwarranted belief 

1 When it became plain tiiat Lutlier's movement was to break up the unity 
of Christendom, Erasmus and nearly all the other Humanists were violently 
repelled by it. Such disruption seemed to them a greater evil than the faults 
it sought to cure. Cf. § 195, close. 

228 



§206] LUTHER AND GERMANY. 229 

seems to have been encouraged grossly by some professional 
" pardoners," who peddled such " letters " for money .^ 

Criticism of these evils was not new. Over a hundred 
years before Luther, Chaucer had devoted the only bitter lines 
in the Canterbury Tales to the Pardoner, with his wallet " bret- 
ful of pardons, come from Rome all hot." In the time of 
Luther the evil had grown in dimensions : Erasmus had writ- 
ten scathing words against it, and earnest and radical spirits 
were ready for an outbreak. Luther had criticised it in earlier 
writings ; and in 1517 a visit to Wittenberg by Tetzel, a Domin- 
ican friar, with a batch of these papal letters, called forth a 
more vehement protest from him. 

206. Luther posts his Theses. — In accordance with a Uni- 
versity custom, Luther expressed his protest in the form of a 
paper posted on the Wittenberg church door, containing ninety- 
five propositions,^ upon which he challenged all comers to pub- 
lic debate. The theses were in Latin, and they admitted the 
old church doctrine of papal indulgences ; but their protest 
against the abuse of the practice met with so ready a popular 
response that in a few days they were known and discussed in 
German all over the land. 



1 It had long been common to grant " Indulgences " in return for gifts of 
money for pious purposes ; and in a period of ignorance and moral decline, 
this practice slipped easily into what was practically an almost undisguised 
selling of indulgence for sin. The church; aroused to reform by the Protest- 
ant secession, recognized this danger. The Council of Trent, which sat at 
intervals from 1545 to 1563, to expiate heresies and reform morals, reaffirmed 
emphatically the need of three acts in the penitent to secure the entire remis- 
sion of sins, — " to wit, contrition, confession, and atonement." The Council 
then condemns " those who assert that indulgences are useless, or who deny 
the power of the church to grant them. ... In granting them, however, the 
Council desires that . . . moderation be observed. . . . And, being desirous 
of mending the abuses which have crept in, by occasion of which the honor- 
able name of indulgences is blasphemed by heretics, the Council ordains . . . 
that all evil gains for the obtaining thereof be abolished." In later times the 
practice of granting indulgences in return for money has been discontinued. 
A translation of a Letter of Indulgence is given in Scribner's Monthly, XII, 
80. See also Pennsj/lvania Reprints, II, No. 6. 
^Pennsylvania Reprints, II, No. 6. 



230 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§207 

Luther was honestly amazed at this result. He seems at 
first to have had no thought of denying papal authority. He 
dedicated to Pope Leo X certain writings in defense of his 
position, and in a letter to Leo he says : — 

By what unlucky chance it is that these particular propositions 
of mine, more than all others, should go forth into nearly all the earth, I 
am at a loss to know. They were set forth here for our use alone, and 
how they should come to everybody's knowledge is incredible to me. . . . 
But what shall I do ? Recall them I cannot ; and yet I see that their 
notoriety bringeth upon me great odium. In order then to soften my ad- 
versaries, and to gratify my friends, I send forth these trifles [proofs, 
etc.] to explain my theses. For greater safety, I let them go forth, most 
blessed Father, under your name and under the shadow of your protec- 
tion. Here all who will may see how basely I am reproached and belied 
by my enemies. . . . Save or slay, call or recall, approve or disapprove, 
as it shall best please you, I shall acknowledge your voice as the voice of 
Christ presiding and speaking in you. 

However, Luther found himself unable to defend this origi- 
nal position against the skillful logic of his critics; and by 
degrees he was driven into open rebellion against all papal 
authority. Soon he denied the infallibility of the pope and 
of church councils, and appealed to the Bible as the rule of 
conduct and of faith. This meant, of course, Luther's judg- 
ment of the Bible. So Protestantism unintentionally was to 
come to stand for the right and duty of individual judgment 
in matters of religion. 

207. Burning of the Papal Bull : Luther at Worms. — Finally, 
after trying to convert the rebel by legates, Pope Leo X 
issued a bull threatening Luther with excommunication if he 
did not within two months abandon his position. This bull 
Luther burned before the town gates in December, 1520- 
The open conflict between the German friar and the Catholic 
church had begun. 

The next year Charles V summoned a Diet of the Empire 
at Worms, to settle affairs in Germany. Luther attended, 
under a safe conduct, and fearlessly reaffirmed his position 



§209J CHARLES V AND THE EEFORMATION. 231 

His friends had tried to dissuade him from attending the Diet, pointing 
to the fate of Huss a century before ; but Luther persisted, saying char- 
acteristically, ' ' I would go on if there were as many devils in Worms as 
there are tiles on the housetops." Before the Diet he showed no falter- 
ing, though the power of the Empire and of the church were arrayed in 
scornful contempt against him ; and he Closed his statement with the 
heroic words, " Here I stand. As God is my help, I can no otherwise." 

The Diet pronounced the ban of the Empirfe against him and 
ordered his writings burned. Luther was carried off into hid- 
ing by his friends, and he spent a year at the Wartburg castle 
translating the New Testament into German. Meantime his 
teachings spread rapidly over North Germany. 

208. The Peasant War. — The German peasants were in a more de- 
plorable condition than those of France or England. The new religious 
doctrines spread among them in somewhat distorted form, accompanied 
by new ideas of property rights. In 1525, the peasants rose in arms, 
avenging centuries of suffering by terrible cruelties toward their masters. 
Luther seems to have sympathized with their earlier demands, ^ but evi- 
dently he came to fear that his reform would be associated with anarchy, 
and he called loudly upon the Protestant princes to put down the rebels 
with the sword. The rising was finally stamped out, and apparently the 
peasantry won no improvement from it. 

B. Charles V and the Eeformation. 

209. A Respite for the Reformers. — The ban of the Empire 
would have been enforced and Lutheranism would have 
been crushed at its birth, if the young and zealous Catholic 
Emperor, Charles V, had had his hands free. Happily for 
Protestantism, his reign was spent in incessant wars.^ While 

1 See Pennsylvania Reprints, II, No. 6, pages 25-30, for the peasants' state- 
ment of their program. Some of these radical Protestants were called Ana- 
baptists, because of their doctrines about baptism. Ten thousand of them are 
said to have been put to death in the cruel vengeance of the victorious lords. 

2 Cf . §§ 170-173. It is a peculiar fact that the two countries destitute of 
settled government gave Europe tlie Renaissance and the Reformation. The 
intense civic vigor of the small Italian states was a condition favorable to tlie 
intellectual activity and independence of the Renaissance, and the absence of 
an effective central government was tlie condition which permitted Protes- 
tantism so long to grow unchecked in Germany. 



232 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 210 

the Diet of Worms was condemuing Luther, the Spanish towns 
were rising in revolt and Francis I of France was seizing 
Italian territory. The rebellion was j)ut down promptly and 
the ancient liberties of the Spanish towns were extinguished ; 
but the wars against France and against the Turk, with only 
brief truces, filled the next twenty-three years (1521-1544) ; 
and so for a generation the new faith was left to grow strong.^ 

210. "Protestants"; the Augsburg Confession; League of 
Smalkald. — The first important interruption in the French 
wars came in 1529. Charles at once summoned a Diet at 
Speier, which reaffirmed the decree of Worms. Against this 
decision the Lutheran princes presented a protest. This act 
gave the name Protestant to their party. The following year, 
in a Diet at Augsburg, the Lutherans put forward a written 
statement of their beliefs.^ Charles, however, autocratically 
demanded from the princes the execution of the decrees of 
Worms and Speier, and prepared to enforce them by arms. 
In defense, the Protestant nobles organized the League of 
Smalkald; but an open clash was once more postponed, 
because of an attack upon Germany by Solyman, the Turkish 
Sultan. 

211. Opening of the Religious Strife in Germany: Peace of 
Augsburg. — Before Charles was again at liberty to give his 
attention to his Protestant subjects, Lutheranism had become 
the religion of most of Germany and of all Scandinavia, while 
the English church had cut itself off from Eome as an inde- 
pendent Episcopal Church, and a new Presbyterian heresy 
had begun to spread rapidly in France and even in Germany 
(§§ 216 ff.). Try as he might, Charles did not find himself free 

1 The striking incidents connected with these wars were (1) the Battle of 
Pavia (1525) and the capture of Francis ; (2) the capture and sack of Rome 
by the army of Charles (made up largely of German Lutherans) , when the 
Pope for a time had sided with France ; (3) the alliance between Francis and 
the Turkish Sultan, Solyman the Magnificent, and Solyman's invasion of 
Germany ; (4) the ravages of Turkish pirates along the Mediterranean coasts. 
These topics may be assigned students for special reports. 

2 This " Augsburg Confession " is still the platform of the Lutheran Church; 



^' V \ Bishoprics, 

/Duchy p¥S'--l"'"S\ ^l 

0->,,__Xatienburg^ W'^'""-^ 

biirgd \^t'' 
\Lauenbnr-4,,^, 

Ducliy of\^ 




§ 213] THE COUNTER-REFORMATION. 233 

to strike In Germany until 1546, tlie year of Luther's death- 
Then two brief struggles settled the contest for the time. 
In the first, Cliarles seemed completely victorious over the 
Smalkald League; but almost at once the defeated princes 
rallied again, drove Charles in hurried flight from their do- 
mains, and forced him to accept the Peace of Augsburg (1555). 
According to this treaty, each ruling prince of the Empire was 
free to choose between Lutheranism and Catholicism for him- 
self and for all his subjects,^ except that if an ecclesiastical 
ruler became a Protestant, he was to surrender his lands to 
the church, from whom they came. 

212. Abdication of Charles. — The Protestants in their last 
rising had sought aid from Henry II, the new French king; 
and France for her reward had seized some German districts, 
including the city of Metz. Charles proved unable to recover 
the territory. Chagrined at the loss and disheartened by the 
split within the Empire, he abdicated his many crowns in 
1556. His brother Ferdinand succeeded him in the Austrian 
possessions, and soon after as emperor, while his son Philip II 
received the Netherlands, Spain, Naples, and Spanish America. 

C. The Counter-Reformation. 

213. Protestantism in the South of Europe, and its Check. — 

For a time it seemed as though Protestantism would overrun 
the south of Europe also, but the Romance lands and South 
Germany were finally saved to the old church. France was to re- 
main Catholic, partly as the result of religious wars (§§ 227 ff.). 
The same may be said of much of South Germany and of mod- 
ern Belgium (§§ 231, 222) ; and the final victory of Catholicism 
elsewhere was due partly to the terrible repression of the new 
faith by the Inquisition. More important than this element 
of violence, however, was the purifying of the old faith by the 
movement known as the Counter-Reformation. 

1 Observe that this peace secured toleration only for rulers, not for the peo- 
ple, and that it disregarded all Protestant sects except the Lutherans. 



23-4 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 214 

214. The Inquisition, or Holy Office, had been organized in a 

comparatively mild form for the suppression of the Albigensian 
heresy (§ 83). After open resistance in Languedoc had been 
crushed, the Pope appointed a special court to hunt out and 
try heretics there. This court soon became a regular part of 
the machinery of the church. A little before 1500, it was 
introduced into Spain to deal with Jews and Moors who had 
adopted Christianity but who afterward returned to their 
old faiths ; and after the appearance of Lutheranism, the 
authorities of the church turned to it to deal with this more 
alarming heresy. The court was reorganized and enlarged ; 
and in this final form it is generally known as the "Spanish 
Inquisition.^' It held sway in Portugal and in Italy, as well 
as in all the wide-lying Spanish possessions, but France and 
Germany never admitted it in any considerable degree. 

The methods of the Inquisition were atrocious, and its story 
i* one of the darkest that blot the pages of history. The In- 
quisitor encouraged and commanded children to betray their 
parents, and parents their children. Upon secret accusation 
by spies, a victim disappeared, without warning, to under- 
ground dungeons. The trial that followed was a gross farce. 
The court did not confront the accused with his accuser, nor 
allow him witnesses of his choosing ; and it extorted confes- 
sion by cruel and ingenious tortures, carried to a point beyond 
which human courage could not endure. Acquittals were rare. 
The property of the convicted went to enrich the church, and 
the heretic himself was handed over to the government for 
death by fire. 

Persecution of unbelievers was characteristic of the age and 
disgraced every sect, Protestant as well as Catholic, but no 
Protestant land possessed a device so admirably calculated to 
accomplish its evil purpose as this Spanish Inquisition. Un- 
questionably it sifted out for destruction thousands upon thou- 
sands of the stoutest hearts and best brains of Spain, and no 
doubt it played a great part in the intellectual blight that soon 
fell upon that people (§ 224). 



§215] THE COUNTER-REFORMATION. 235 

215. Reform within the Church : the Council of Trent ; the 
Jesuits. — A pleasanter form of the reaction against Protes- 
tantism lay in the great reform within the Catliolic church. 
This movement was organized by the Council of Trent (1545- 
1563). Catholic forms were not changed ; but some doctrines 
were more exactly defined, abuses were pruned away, and a 
greater moral energy was infused into the church.^ 

The new religious enthusiasm gave birth to several new reli- 
gious Orders. The most important of these was that of the 
Jesuits. This "Order of Jesus" was founded in 1534 by 
Ignatius Loyola, a gallant Spanish gentleman of deep religious 
convictions. Loyola had designed his society for missionary 
work among the Mohammedans; but an accident prevented his 
setting out, and he soon adopted wider projects. The Jesuits 
stood to the friars somewhat as the friars stood to the older 
monks (§ 84) : holding fast like both these Orders to an in- 
tensely religious private life, they represented a further advance 
into the world of public affairs. Their members mingled with 
men in all capacities. Especially did they distinguish them- 
selves as statesmen and as teachers. Their schools were the 
best in Europe, and many a Protestant youth was won back 
by them to Catholicism. In like manner, as individual coun- 
sellors, they converted many a Protestant prince — especially 
in Germany, where the religion of the prince determined that 
of his people (§ 211). 

Much of the success of the Jesuits was due to their perfect 
obedience to their superiors, and to their rigid military organi- 
zation. They became the chief soldiers of the pope in check- 
ing the advance of Protestantism in Europe, and their many 
devoted missionaries among the heathen in the New Worlds 
won vast regions to Christianity and Catholicism. 

1 This beneficent effect upon the Catholic world from the Protestant seces- 
sion corresponds to the moral awakening in the Church of England, two hun- 
dred years later, caused by the great Methodist secession. In some part, no 
doubt, the reform resulted from forces within the church, independent of the 
Protestant revolt. The work of Erasmus was one of these forces. 



236 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 216 

D. Pbotestant Sects. 

216. Division into Sects the Natural Result of Protestantism. — 

The right of private judgment, which lay at the basis of Prot- 
estantism (§ 206) and which was thoroughly in accord with the 
spirit of the Renaissance, resulted in a multitude of sects. 
These sects were scandalously hostile to each other : and, in 
Germany in particular, the mutual hatred of Lutherans and 
Calvinists seriously weakened the cause of the Reformation.^ 
Undoubtedly, on the other hand, the variety of thought and 
the rivalry between the sects contributed to intellectual and 
moral activity. The two most important Protestant move- 
ments after the growth of Lutheranism have already been 
referred to (§ 211), but now demand fuller treatment. 

217. Calvinism. — The Father of the Presbyterian church 
and of Puritan theology was John Calvin, a Frenchman. Cal- 
vin had promptly adopted Luther's teachings against the 
papacy, but he added new ideas of his own regarding church 
government and religious doctrine. The city of Geneva 
afforded him an opportunity to put his system into practice. 
Geneva was a Prench town in the Swiss Alps. It was not a 
member of the Swiss confederation ; but it had just established 
itself as a free city-republic by rebellion against an ecclesiasti- 
cal lord ; and the bitter struggle left the people disposed to 
Protestantism. Here Calvin, a fugitive from France, took up 
his abode in 1536, and soon he was the absolute dictator of the 
little state. Geneva became a Puritan " theocracy," and fur- 
nished many hints for the future American Puritan common- 
wealths. 

Calvin's writings influenced profoundly his own and future 
times. The more ardent reformers from all Europe flocked 
to Geneva to imbibe his teachings, and then returned to spread 
Calvinism in their own lands. From Geneva came the seeds 

1 Catholics pointed to these divisions as proofs of the necessity of relying 
upon the collective wisdom of the church, rather than upon the individual 
judgment. 



§218] PKOTESTANT SECTS. 237 

of Scotch Presbyterianism, of the great Puritan movement 
within the English Cliurch, of the leading Protestant move- 
ment among the Dutch, and of the Huguenot church in France. 

Calvin's government repressed amusements and tyrannized 
over the private lives of citizens, but it made Geneva a sober 
and industrious commonwealth. One terrible deed stains 
Calvin's fame. Servetus, a learned physician, who denied the 
doctrine of the Trinity and who had had literary controver- 
sies with Calvin, ventured to visit Geneva. He was promptly 
arrested, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake.^ 

The Calvinistic doctrine in its original form seems to nearly 
all men of the present time too sober and merciless. It was, 
however, sternly logical. It made strong men, and it appealed 
to strong spirits. Fortunately, in the course of historical 
movements, it became the ally of political freedom in Holland, 
England, and America. 

218. The Church of England and English Puritanism. — In Eng- 
land, separation from Rome was at first the act of the mon- 
archs, rather than of the people, and the motives were personal 
and political, rather than religious. King Henry VIII had 
shown himself zealous against Luther, and had even written 
a book to controvert him. A little later, however, Henry de- 
sired a divorce from his wife, the unfortunate Catherine of 
Aragon, aunt of Charles V (§ 172). Catherine's only child was 
a girl (Mary), and Henry was anxious for a male heir, in 
order to maintain public peace and tranquillity. Moreover, he 
desired to marry Anne Boleyn, a lady of the court for whom 
he had begun to feel a guilty passion. After long negotiation, 
the Pope refused to grant the divorce. Thereupon Henry put 
himself in the place of the Pope so far as his island was con- 
cerned, and secured the divorce from his own courts. 

The secession of the English church was accomplished in the 
years 1532-1534, by two simple but far-reaching measures of 
Henry's servile Parliament. (1) The clergy and people were 

1 See § 199, note. In the year 1903, Calvinist subscriptions from all over 
the world erected at Geneva a noble " expiatory statue " to Servetus. 



238 THE PROTESTANT REFOEMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 218 

forbidden to make further payments to "the Bishop of Eome " ; 
and (2) the "Act of Supremacy" declared Henry the "only 
supreme head on earth of the Church of England." 

Parliament was ready to follow the king in all matters, in the reign of 
the despot Henry ; but in this case, no donbt, its willingness was partly 
due to the old English feeling for independence of papal control (§ 164), 
and partly, perhaps, to some sympathy for the Lutheran movement. 

Henry wished no further change ; but his chief advisers and 
agents — his minister, Thomas Cromwell, and the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, Cranmer — had secret leanings toward the Refor- 
mation, and they secured from him some additional measures. 
The English Bible was introduced into the church service, and 
the doctrine of purgatory was declared false. At Henry's 
wish, too, Parliament dissolved the hundreds of monasteries 
in England. Some of the wealth of these institutions went to 
found schools and hospitals, but Henry seized most of the lands 
for himself, parceling part of them out to the gentry and to 
a new nobility, who were thus attached to the new movement.^ 

This was as far as Henry could be persuaded to go ; and to 
the close of his reign he continued to behead the " traitors " 
who recognized the papal headship and to burn the " heretics " 
who denied the leading papal doctrines.^ During the short 
reign of Henry's successor, the boy Edward VI, England was 
ruled by a clique of great Protestant lords, who tried to 
carry the English church into the full tide of Protestantism. 
Priests were allowed to marry ; and the use of the old litany, 
of incense, tapers, holy water, and the surplice, was forbidden. 
The English Prayer Book and the "Thirty-nine Articles" of 
the English church date from this period. 

1 Forty thousand families are said to have been enriched by such gifts. Of 
course this created a mighty influence hostile to reconciliation with Rome. 

2 Henry's most famous victim was Sir Thomas More, a Catholic gentle- 
man, and one of the noblest Englishmen of any age. More was beheaded for 
refusing to declare the marriage with Catherine illegal. One Protestant suf- 
ferer was Anne Askew, a gentlewoman of good position, who was burnt for 
saying " The bread [of the communion] cannot be God." Cf. § 72, note. 



§218] ENGLAND AND THE REFORMATION. 239 

But though the nation had felt no great opposition to Henry's 
casting off papal supremacy, it was still overwhelmingly 
Catholic in doctrine and feeling; and Edward's half-sister 
Mary, on her accession to the throne, had no difficulty in doing 
away with the Protestant innovations of her brother's time. 
Mary, however, desired to undo also her father's work; and 
Parliament readily voted the repeal of the anti-Catholic laws, 
except that it stubbornly refused to restore the church lands. 
Finally the Pope wisely waived this matter, and the nation 
was solemnly absolved and received back into the old church. 
Then Mary proceeded to destroy her work by a bloody perse- 
cution of the Protestants, which roused popular fear and detes- 
tation and so prepared for another change. 

Over two hundred and seventy martyrs perished at the stake, — about 
half the entire number that suffered death for conscience' sake in all 
English history. The most famous executions were those of Bishops 
Ridley and Latimer ^ and Archbishop Cranmer. 

A few Catholics had been burned by Edward's Protestant government, 
and even Latimer had preached in commendation of the torture of the 
Catholic Father Forest, roasted in a swinging iron cradle over a slow fire ; 
but the number of these Catholic victims had not been enough to arouse 
popular feeling in a people like the English of that day. So, too, in the 
long reign of forty -five years tha,t followed, — nine times as long as 
Mary's, — there were nearly as many Catholics put to, death as there had 
been Protestant executions under Mary ; but there was no sudden piling 
up of executions, and moreover, nominally, death was inflicted in most 
cases not for religious faith but for treason against Queen Elizabeth.^ 

Mary's brief and troabled reign was followed by the long 
and glorious rule of her half-sister, Elizabeth. The new 
Queen desired probably to return to the ecclesiastical system 
of her father: certainly she had little sympathy with extreme 

1 As Latimer and Ridley approached the stake the former called out cour- 
ageously to his friend, "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day by 
God's grace light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out." 
The words were well justified by the result. 

2 Elizabeth's ministers used the rack and other instruments of torture 
upon their Catholic victims ; but such deeds were secret in the Tower, and 
the executions took place, not at the stake, but on the more familiar scaffold. 



240 THE PKOTESTANT REFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§219 

Protestantism. However, slie was the dangliter of Anne 
Boleyn, whose marriage with Henry was not recognized by 
the papal party. Accordingly, that party denied Elizabeth's 
claim to the throne ; and in self-defense the Queen was forced 
to rely upon the Protestants. Throughout her reign, England 
was threatened by the Catholic Powers, and only Elizabeth's 
shrewd statesmanship saved her country from its incessant 
perils. Einally Philip II, with the blessing of the Pope, sent 
a mighty Spanish armament, the "Invincible Armada," for the 
conquest of England (§ 223). The heroic English navy, aided 
by a great storm in the North Sea, beat off the invasion (1588) ; 
and for the rising generation the gallant sti?uggle identified 
patriotism with Protestantism. Thus, before Elizabeth's death 
(1603), England was Protestant in religion ; and even the Puri- 
tan doctrines from Geneva had begun to spread widely among 
the people (§ 233). 

For Further Reading. — Source material in Fennsylvania Beprints, 
II, No. 6, and III, No. 3. 

Modern accounts : Johnson, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, espe- 
cially on the Counter-Reformation and Calvinism, 261-276 ; Adams, 
Civilization, 416-442 ; Kostlin, Luther ; Beard, Luther ; Hausser, Refor- 
mation; Seebohm, Protestant Reformation; Alzog, Church History; 
Pastor, History of the Popes; Creighton, Papacy ; "Walker, Reformation 
(especially good) ; Fisher, Reformation ; Perry, Reformation in Eng- 
land; Ward, Counter-Reformation ; Creighton, Age of Elizabeth ; Creigh- 
ton, Queen Elizabeth ; Beesly, Elizabeth. 

Special Reports. ^-1. Mary, Queen of Scots. 2. The Armada. 
3. Sir Francis Drake. 4. Sir Walter Raleigh. 5. John Knox. 



II. A CENTURY OF RELIGIOUS WARS. 

219. General Survey. — The Peace of Augsburg (§211), which 
closed the first religious wars in Germany, proved unsatisfactory to both 
parties ; and soon each was charging the other with infringing the terms 
of the treaty. There seems little doubt but that the Protestant Powers 
did systematically disregard the provisions intended to preserve church 
lands to the Catholic church. But though there were incessant bickerings, 



§221] SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS. 241 

Germany had no further civil war for over sixty years. Just this interval 
vs^as filled, however, with terrible religious strife in the Netherlands and 
in France ; and then the age closed, as it began, with a civil war in 
Germany, — the most destructive in history. From the opening of the 
Smalkald war to the end of the Thirty Years' War (1546-1648) is a 
century of almost continuous religious strife. The close of the period is 
marked by the rapid decay of Spain, by the further disruption of Ger- 
many, by the rise of France, of the Dutch Republic, and of England, and 
by the development of political liberty in England. 

A. Spain and the Netherlands. 

220. The Power of Spain under Philip II. — Philip II suc- 
ceeded his father (§ 212) as the most powerful and most 
absolute monarch in Europe. The Spanish infantry were the 
finest soldiery in the world. The Spanish navy was the 
unquestioned mistress of the ocean. Each year the great 
"gold fleet" filled Philip's coffers from the apparently ex- 
haustless wealth of the Americas. In 1580, Portugal and her 
East India empire fell to Spain,^ and the Spanish boast that 
the sun never set upon Spanish Dominions became literal fact. 

221. The Netherland Revolt. — Charles V had seriously 
infringed the old liberties of the Netherlands and had set up 
the Inquisition in that country, with frightful consequences ; ^ 
but the great majority of the people had been attached to him, 
as their native sovereign, and had felt a warm loyalty to his 
government. Philip continued all his father's abvises, without 
possessing any of his redeeming qualities, in Dutch eyes. He 
seemed a foreign master, and he ruled from a distance through 

1 The ruling line of Portugal ran out ; and Philip II, closely related to the 
extinct family, claimed the throne. The Portuguese were unwilling to be 
annexed to Spain, but Philip easily seized upon the country. It remained 
Spanish until 1640, when its independence was established by a successful 
revolt. Meantime most of its colonial empire, except Brazil, had passed 
from Spain to Holland (§ 225) . 

2 Protestant writers used to claim that from fifty thousand to one hundred 
thousand men and women were burned, strangled, or buried alive, within the 
Netherlands during Charles' reign. These numbers appear to be mere guesses 
and serious exaggerations, but it is plain that the actual facts were horrible. 



242 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 222 

foreign officers. Finally, Protestant and Catholic nobles joined 
in a demand for reform. These demands were mainly politi- 
cal ; but just at this time the Protestant mobs in the cities rose 
in fury to sack the churches and cathedrals (1566), and so 
gave a look of religious strife to the beginning of the move- 
ment against Spain. 

Philip's reply was to send the stern Spanish general, Alva, 
with a veteran army, to enforce submission. Alva's council is 
known as the Council of Blood. It declared almost the whole 
population guilty of rebellion, and so deserving of death, with 
confiscation of goods. With disgraceful disregard for even the 
forms of law, the Council proceeded to enforce the atrocious 
sentence upon great numbers, — especially upon the wealthy 
classes, — and in 1568 a revolt began. 

The struggle between the small disunited provinces and the 
world-empire was to last over forty years. In the beginning, 
it was essentially a conflict for political liberty, but it soon 
became a religious struggle. It was waged on both sides with 
an exasperated and relentless fury that made it a byword for 
ferocity, even in that brutal age. The worst excesses were 
chargeable to the Spaniards, because they made war upon 
women and children, as well as upon men. City after city 
was given up to indiscriminate rapine and massacre, with 
deeds of horror indescribable. 

Over against this dark side, stands the stubborn heroism of 
the Dutch people, unsurpassed and hardly matched in all his- 
tory, — a heroism which saved not themselves only, but also 
the cause of Protestantism and of political liberty for the 
world. 

222. William the Silent. The Dutch Republic. — The central 
figure on the side of freedom was William of Orange, the lead- 
ing noble of the land, known in history as William the Silent. 
He is not unfitly called the Dutch Washington. The per- 
sistent, courageous statesmanship of this hero over and again 
snatched a new chance from crushing defeat, and finally made 
his countrymen a nation. The seven northern provinces, 



§222] 



SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS. 



243 



THE NETHERLANDS 

at the Truce of 1609 

SCALE OF MILES 

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 
.The.Seven United Provinces t .vs>^ 

^Che^rovincee etill Retained by Spainh 



A 





^ EAST 
1 UIl!.SLA»D 

. \ •Embden 

H, 1 I S I ' V N D He fY"'" 

^^ - ^ 

69 



244 THE PEOTESTANT EEFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 223 

Dutch in blood and Protestant in religion, became independent, 
as "The United Provinces."^ 

The turning point of the war was the relief of Leyden (1574). 
For many months the city had been closely besieged, and the 
people were dying grimly of starvation. Fifteen miles away, 
on the North Sea, rode a Dutch fleet with supplies; but all 
attempts to relieve the suffering town had failed. Then 
William the Silent cut the dykes and let in the ocean on the 
land. Over wide districts the prosperity of years was engulfed 
in ruin ; but upon the invading sea the relieving ships rode to 
the city gates, and Dutch liberty was saved. ^ 

223. English Aid. Spain's "Invincible Armada" attacks Eng- 
land. — In 1584, William was assassinated by a fanatic, at the 
instigation of Philip II ; but now at last Elizabeth of England 
was ready to render tardy aid. For many years, individual 
English adventurers had joined the Dutch army, or, like Drake, 
had attacked the Spaniards in half-piratical fashion in the 
New World. It was clear that only the successful resistance 
of the Dutch had kept Philip from long since attacking Eng- 
land ; and finally, in 1585, Elizabeth sent a small English army 
to the Netherlands.^ 

Philip then turned upon England. His preparations for 
invading the island were delayed by a gallant exploit of Drake, 
who sailed into the harbor where the expedition was preparing 



1 This new state is often called the Dutch Republic, or the Netherlands. 
Its government was vested in a States General, representing the different 
provinces, and in a Stadtholder. The most important of the seven provinces 
was Holland, which has given its name, in popular usage, to all seven. The 
ten southern provinces of the old Netherlands soon gave up the struggle and 
returned to Spanish allegiance. They were largely French in race and Catho- 
lic in religion. Protestantism was of course completely stamped out in them. 
After this time, they are known as the Spanish Netherlands, and then as the 
Austrian Netherlands again, and finally as modern Belgium (§505). 

2 In memory of its heroic resistance, William offered Leyden exemption 
from taxes or the establishment of a university. The citizens finely chose 
the latter; and the University of Leyden, ever since one of the most famous 
universities in Europe, arose to commemorate the city's deed. 

8 Anecdote of the dying Sir Philip Sidney and the drink of water. 



§224] SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS. 245 

and burned the Spanish fleet, " singeing the beard of the 
Spanish king," as the old searrover described it ; but in 1588 
the "Invincible Armada" at last set sail for England (§ 218, 
close). English ships of all sorts — mostly little merchant 
vessels hastily transformed into a war navy — gathered in 
the Channel ; and, to the amazement of the world, the small 
but swift and better handled English vessels completely out- 
fought the great Spanish navy in a splendid nine-days' sea 
fight. As the shattered Spaniards fled around the north of 
Scotland, a mighty storm completed their overthrow. Eng- 
land was saved, and the prospect for Dutch success was greatly 
improved. Spain never recovered her supremacy on the sea, and 
the way was prepared for the English colonization of America. 

224. The Decay of Spain. Her final Service to Christendom at 
Lepanto. — The war between Spain and Holland dragged on twenty 
years more, but in 1609 a truce was concluded which virtually established 
the independence of the Dutch Eepublic. From tliis time, Spain sank 
rapidly into a second-rate power. The narrow bigot, Pliilip III, drove 
into exile the Christianized Moors, or Moriscoes. These were the de- 
scendants of the old Mohammedan rulers of the land, who had been 
left behind when the Moorish political power had been driven out, in the 
preceding centuries. They numbered over half a million, — perhaps a 
twentieth of the entire population, — and they were the foremost agricul- 
turalists and almost the sole skilled artisans and manufacturers in the 
peninsula. Their pitiless expulsion inflicted a deadly blow upon the 
prosperity of Spain. For a time the wealth she drew from America 
disguised her fall, and she continued to furnish financial resources for the 
Catholic Powers through the Thirty Years' War (§ 231). But after the 
Armada she never played a great part in Europe, and, relying upon 
the plunder of the New "World for riches, she failed to develop the in- 
dustrial life which alone could furnish a true national prosperity. 

One great service Spain had rendered Christendom, just before England 
and Holland broke her naval power. Por a generation, Turkish fleets, 
almost unchecked, had ravaged the Christian coasts of the Mediterranean, 
even burning villages far inland and sweeping off the peasants into cap- 
tivity. Cyprus had fallen before their attack, and Malta had been saved 
only by the heroic efforts of the Knights of St. John.i Finally Spain, 

1 Special report : the siege of Malta ; read Prescott's account in his Philip 
II, if available. 



246 THE PROTESTANT REFOEMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 225 

Venice, and the Pope joined their naval strength, and in 1571 the com- 
bined Christian fleet annihilated the great Turkish navy at Lepatito, on 
the Greek coast. Lepanto was the greatest naval battle since Cartha- 
ginian days. Over six hundred ships engaged. The Turks lost thirty thou- 
sand men, and twelve thousand Christian rowers were freed from their 
horrible slavery at the oar. The Turks never recovered their former 
naval importance ; and Indeed the turning point of their power is often 
dated from this defeat. 

225. The Prosperity of the Dutch Republic. — The most mar- 
velous feature of the struggle between the little Dutch state 
and Spain was that Holland actually grew wealthy during 
the contest, although the stage of a desolating war. This 
strange result was due to the fact that the Dutch were a mari- 
time people, drawing their riches not from the wasted land, 
but from the sea, and that during the war they plundered the 
possessions of Spain in the East Indies. The little republic 
built up a great colonial empire, and, especially after Spain's 
naval supremacy had been engulfed with the Armada, the 
Dutch held almost a monopoly of the Asiatic trade for all 
Europe. One hundred thousand of their three million people 
lived constantly upon the sea. 

Moreover, success in so heroic a war stimulated the people 
to a wonderful intellectual and industrial activity. They 
taught to all Europe scientific agriculture and horticulture, as 
well as the science of navigation. In the seventeenth century 
the presses of Holland are said to have put forth more books 
than all the rest of Europe. Motley sums up this wonderful 
career of Holland briefly : — 

The splendid empire of Charles V was erected upon the grave of lib- 
erty. . . . But from the hand-breadth of territory called Holland rises 
a power which wages eighty years' warfare i with the most potent empire 
upon earth, and which, during the struggle, becomes itself a mighty state, 
and, binding about its slender form a zone of the richest possessions .of 
the earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire 
of Charles. 

1 Motley includes in this number the Thirty Years' War, § 230. 



§227] WAES OF THE TRENCH HUGUENOTS. 247 

B. Wars of the French Huguenots. 

226. Conditions in France. — The French Protestants were Cal- 
vinists, and are known as Huguenots. By 1560, they counted 
one man out of twenty in the population, and, because of the 
logical appeal of Calvin to the intellect, their numbers were 
made up almost wholly from the nobles and the wealthy middle 
class. Francis I and Henry II persecuted the new faith, but 
not continuously enough to crush it. Henry was followed by 
his three sons, — Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III, — all 
weak in body and in mind. During their reigns (1559-1589), 
power was disputed between two groups of great lords. Each 
was closely related to the failing royal family, and each hoped 
to place a successor upon the throne. One of these groups 
was the Catholic Guise family ; the other was the Protestant 
Bourbons, who counted as their leaders the King of Navarre 
and the Prince of Conde. In the background was the chief 
figure of all, the crafty, cruel, and utterly unscrupulous Queen- 
mother, Catherine of Medici, who played off one party against 
the other in whatever way might best promote her own control 
over her feeble sons. These were the conditions that bred 
civil war in France. 

227. Period of Strife ; St. Bartholomew. — War between the 
two factions opened in 1562 and lasted, with brief truces, to 
1598. More than the other struggles of the period, it was 
marked by assassinations and treacheries, which struck down 
almost every leader on either side. The most horrible event 
of this character was the Massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 
24, 1572). An honest attempt had just been made to establish 
a lasting peace, and a marriage had been arranged between the 
Huguenot leader, the young Henry of Navarre, and the sister 
of King Charles IX. The grandest character of the age, the 
Protestant Coligny, became one of Charles' chief counsellors, 
and soon won remarkable influence over him. Catherine of 
Medici had favored the arrangement at first ; but she had not 
expected to see her own power over her son so superseded, and 



248 THE PROTESTANT EEFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§228 

she passed over secretly to the Guises again. One attempt to 
assassinate Coligny failed, and the King threatened vengeance 
for the attack. Then the conspirators, as a desperate resort, 
played upon his religious fears and bigotry with a new plot to 
cleanse France from heresy at one blow ; and his consent was 
finally won for a general massacre of the Huguenots. Large 
numbers of that sect were assembled in Paris to witness the 
marriage of their chief. The secret was kept perfectly, to the 
appointed moment ; and then the mob of Paris bathed in Hugue- 
not blood. Ten thousand victims fell in France. Nothing else 
so well shows the terrible ferocity of the religious struggle in 
Europe as the reception of this news. The Protestant world 
shuddered with horror and fear ; but great and good men among 
the Catholics, believing that the stroke had barely averted a 
treacherous uprising by the Huguenots, loudly expressed their 
joy and offered special services of praise to God. 

228. Henry IV ; the Edict of Nantes. — Henry III, who 
showed himself too moderate for the Catholic League, and who, 
in order to secure greater freedom of action, had had the Duke 
of Guise murdered, was himself struck down by a Catholic 
assassin. Henry of Navarre was the nearest heir to the throne, 
and he became king as Henry IV, but only after four years 
more of civil war with the Catholic League. Finally, to secure 
Paris, which he had long besieged, Henry accepted Catholi- 
cism, declaring lightly that so fair a city was " well worth a 
mass." His purpose, of course, was not only to secure the 
capital, but also to give stable peace to his distracted country. 
In this he was thoroughly successful. The thirty years of 
conflict closed ; and in 1598 the Edict of Nantes established 
toleration for the Huguenots. They were granted full equality 
before the law ; they were to have perfect liberty of conscience, 
and to enjoy the privilege of public worship, except in the 
cathedral cities ; while certain towns were handed over to them, 
to hold with their own garrisons, as a security for their rights.^ 

. 1 This last measure was no doubt needful, but it carried with it a political 
danger: it set up a state within a state, and hindered tbe uuity of France. 



§229] WARS OF THE FRENCH HUGUENOTS. 249 

Henry IV proved one of the greatest of Frencli Kings, and 
he was one of the most loved. With his sagacious minister, 
the Protestant Diike of Sully, lie set himself to restore pros- 
perity to desolated France.^ Roads and canals were built, 
new trades were fostered, and under the blessings of a firm 
government, the industry of the French people with marvelous 
rapidity removed the evil results of the long strife. Before 
his death, Henry had begun to think himself ready to enlarge 
France again by foreign conquest at the expense of the Haps- 
burgs; but in 1610 he was assassinated by a half -insane 
Catholic fanatic. 

229. Richelieu : Separate Political Power of the Huguenots 
crushed; German Protestants aided. — At the death of Henry 
IV, his son Louis XIII was a boy of nine years. During the 
long regency of the weak Queen-mother, anarchy again raised 
its head ; but France was saved by the commanding genius of 
Cardinal Richelieu. Richelieu became the chief minister of 
the young King in 1624, and he remained the controlling 
power in France until his death (1642). He was a sincere 
French patriot, and, though an earnest Catholic, his states- 
manship was guided always by political, not by religious, 
motives. He crushed the great nobles mercilessly, and he 
waged war upon the Hiiguenots to deprive them of La Rochelle 
and their other garrisoned towns, which menaced the unity of 
France. But when he had captured their cities and held the 
Huguenots at his mercy, he kept toward them in full all the 
other pledges of the Edict of Nantes. As a statesman, he 
wished to use Catholic and Protestant together for the up- 
building of the nation ; and he carried out his purpose by aid- 
ing the German Protestants in the religious war that was 
going on in Germany against the Catholic Emperor, — so 
securing a chance to seize imperial territory for France. To 
make the king supreme in France, he waged war upon the 



1 One of Henry's treasured sayings was, that, if he lived, the poorest peas- 
ant should have a fowl in the pot on a Sunday. 



250 THE PROTESTANT EEFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 230 

Protestants within the nation ; to make France supreme in 
Europe, he aided in war the Protestants of Germany. 

After Francis I, France had given up Italy and had begun to work 
for a frontier to the Rhine. Henry II had made a beginning (§ 212), and 
Richelieu laid the foundation for the rapid additions that were to come in 
the reign of Louis XIV (§§ 26S, 264). At first this policy was not mere 
greed : it was partly a policy of self-preservation. With the Austrian and 
Spanish Hapsburgs united or in alliance, France was for a time in serious 
danger of being crushed between them. The failure of Spain against Hol- 
land and the policy of Richelieu against Austria did away with that danger. 

C. The Thirty Years' War in Germany. 

230. The Parties and Leaders. — Fortunately for German Prot- 
estants, the two immediate successors of Charles V on the im- 
perial throne were liberal in temper, — disinclined either to 
persecution or to religious war. So for sixty years more, the 
new faith gained ground rapidly, ■ until it spread over much 
of South Germany and held almost exclusive possession of 
Bohemia, the home of the ancient Hussite reform and now a 
Hapsburg province.^ Strife was incessantly threatening, how- 
ever. The Hapsburgs strove to restrict Protestantism in their 
hereditary dominions, while the Protestants vigorously en- 
deavored, to secure even the ecclesiastical lands there. These 
conditions led to the last of the great religious wars. It began 
just a century after Luther posted his theses at Wittenberg, 
and it is known as the Thirty Tears' War (1618-1648). Beyond 
doubt, it was the most destructive and terrible war in all 
history. The divided Protestant princes showed themselves 
timid and incapable, and, had the war been left to Germany, a 
Catholic victory would soon have been assured. But first Den- 
mark (1/525-1629) and then Sweden (1630) entered the field in 
behalf of the Protestant cause, and, at the last. Catholic 
France under Eichelieu (1635-1648) threw its weight against 
the Emperor, 

1 Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, had secured this realm for his house, 
by marriage with Anne, heiress of Bohemia. 



§231] THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 251 

The war was marked by the career of four great generals, — Tilly and 
Wallenstein on the imperial side, and Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 
"the Lion of the North," and Mansfeld on the side of the Protestants. 
Gustavus was at once great and admirable ; but he fell at the battle of 
LUtzen (1632), in the moment of victory; and thereafter the struggle 
was as dreary as it was terrible. Mansfeld and Wallenstein from the 
first deliberately adopted the policy of making the war pay by supporting 
their armies everywhere upon the country. The excessive horrors of the 
great struggle must be charged in large measure to these men. At the 
close of his career, Wallenstein seems to have been planning to betray 
the Emperor to the Swedes ; but he was arrested and murdered by im- 
perial messengers (1634). 

231. Effect upon Germany. — The calamities the war brought 
upon a whole people were so monstrous and indescribable that 
it seems weak to dwell upon brilliant characters or striking 
events. It was a huge, blasting ruin, from which Germany- 
had not fully recovered in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Season by season, for a generation of human life, armies 
of ruthless freebooters harried the land with fire and sword. 
The peasant, who found that he toiled only to feed robbers and 
to draw them to outrage and torture his family, ceased to 
labor and became himself robber or camp-follower. Half the 
population and two-thirds the movable property of Germany 
were swept away. In many large districts, the facts were 
worse than this average. The Duchy of Wurtemberg had fifty 
thousand people left out of five hundred thousand. Populous 
cities had become hamlets ; and for miles upon miles, former 
hamlets were the lairs of wolfpacks. Not until 1850 did 
some sections of Germany again contain as many homesteads 
and cattle as in 1618. 

Even more destructive was the result upon industry and 
character. Whole trades, with all their long-inherited skill, 
had passed from the memory of men.^ Land tilled for cen- 
turies became wilderness, and men became savages. The 

1 An instance of this is the wonderful old German wood-carving. A genu- 
ine old piece of German cabinet-work is easily placed before 1618, because the 
war simply wiped out the skill and the industry. 



252 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1520-1648. [§ 232 

generation that survived the war had come to manhood with- 
out schools or churches or law or orderly industry. The low 
position of the German peasantry, morally and mentally, well 
into the nineteenth century, was a direct result of the Thirty 
Years' War. 

232. The Peace of "Westphalia, 1648. — The war was closed by 
the Peace of Westphalia. This treaty was drawn up by a 
congress of ambassadors from nearly every European Power. 
It contains three distinct classes of stipulations, — the provi- 
sions for religious peace in Germany, the territorial rewards 
for France and Sweden, and the political provisions to secure 
the independence of the German princes as against the 
Empire. 

a. The principle of the Peace of Augsburg was reaffirmed 
and extended. Each sovereign prince was to choose Catholi- 
cism, Lutheranism, or Calvinism ; and his subjects were to 
have three years to conform to his choice, or to withdraw from 
his realm.^ 

6. Sweden, which was in that day a great Baltic power, ex- 
tending around both the east and west shores of that sea, 
secured also most of the south coast. Pomerania — with the 
mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser — was the payment she 
received for her part in the war. This gave Sweden control 
over German commerce. France annexed most of Alsace, with 
some fortresses on the German bank of the Rhine. The inde- 
pendence of Switzerland (§ 161) and of the Dutch Provinces 
(§ 225) was expressly recognized. 

c. Besides this loss of imperial territory, there were various 
political rearrangements within Germany, which made clear 
the lack of unity in the Empire. The states were expressly 

^ The practice of toleration liad gained ground so far that the Catholics in 
the North German Protestant states were rarely molested. Many of the South 
German Protestants, however, were driven into exile. Indeed, this was the 
first cause of the coming to America of the " Pennsylvania Dutch " ; most of 
the German immigration to America before the Revolution was connected 
with this expulsion or with the devastation of the Rhine provinces a little 
later by Louis XIV (§ 265). 



§232] THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 253 

granted the right of forming alliances with each other or 
with foreign powers ; and all possibility of important action 
by the imperial Diet was taken away, by a provision that in 
votes which concerned religion no state of the Empire should 
be bound, except by its own consent. 

For Eurther Reading. — Motley ''s Dutch Bepublic and United Neth- 
erlands; Hausser's Beformation ; Johnson's Europe in the Sixteenth 
Century and Wakeman's Ascendancy of France, to page 105 ; Creighton's 
Elizabeth; Gveevi' s English People ; Baivd'' s Huguenots ; WiWevVs Hem'y 
of Navarre; Gardiner's T/iiVf?/ Years'' War; Henderson's Short History of 
Germany ; Fletcher's Gustavus Adolphus ; Dodge's Gustavus Adolphus; 
Perkins' Bichelieu; Putnam's William the Silent. 

In fiction : Kingsley's Westward, Ho ! (for England and the Armada) ; 
Schiller's Wallenstein; Bulwer's iSjc/ieZiew. 

Exercises. — 1. A catchword review of the Reformation in Germany, 
through the whole period. 2. Contrast the character of the Reforma- 

tion in Germany with that of the movement in England. 



CHAPTER III. 

ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

(Rise of Political Liberty, 1603-1688.) 

I. PRELIMINARY: SURVEY OF THE YORKIST AND TUDOR 
PERIODS, 1485-1603.1 

233. An Era of Change, 1450-1600. — The century and a half 
from 1450 to 1600, — the age of the Wars of the Roses and of 
the Tudors, — had been a period of tremendous changes in 
English life, intellectual, religious, political, and economic. 
(1) The Renaissance (originating in Italian influence) had 
created a new intellectual life (§ 199), with the abounding 
spontaneous energy and the enthusiastic self-reliance that we 
associate with the names of Shakspere and Elizabeth and Ra- 
leigh. (2) The Reformation (due to German influence, to the 
general renaissance movement, and to the personal desires of 
monarchs) had introduced new religious organization and feel- 
ing (§§ 218, 223). (3) On the ruins of the two chief political 
forces of earlier times, — feudalism and the church, — the 
sovereigns had built up a new political system.^ (4) Lastly, a 
transformation took place in the economic organization of 
society (upon which had rested both the old feudalism and the 
old church) : the rural organization was revolutionized, and 

1 It has been convenient to trace some phases of English history in the six- 
teenth century by themselves in §§ 218, 223; but before taking up the great 
struggle between Parliament and kings, in the seventeenth century, it is 
desirable to give fuller attention to the preceding hundred years. 

2 Edward IV and Henry VIII, it has been noted, carried further the work 
of the Wars of the Roses in crushing the old nobility, and Henry VIII and 
Elizabeth did away with the independence of the church. 

254 



§234] INCLOSURES IN THE PRECEDING CENTURY. 255 

towns grew into new prominence. Thus the last change has 
to be studied from the two view-points of country and of town 
(§§ 234, 235). 

The first three changes have been treated in some detail in the previ- 
ous chapters. The fourth is more difficult to grasp. In a sense, it under- 
lies the others. The discontent of the towns brought about the victory of 
the Yorkists over the feudal party of the Lancastrians in the Wars of the 
Roses (§ 145). The towns, too, were the strongholds of the Reformation 
movement against the Catholic rural districts and especially against the 
Catholic North. And in the towns developed the new intellectual life of 
the renaissance age. 

234. The Economic Change in the Country: Inclosures. — By 

1450, after a century of progress, villeinage had disappeared 
(§§ 141, 142). The small farmer was living in rude abun- 
dance ; and comfort surrounded even the farm laborer, — with 
his cow, sheep, or geese, on the common, his four-acre patch of 
garden about his cabin, and good wages for his labor on the 
landlord's fields. From about 1425 to about 1500 was a golden 
age for these lower rural classes. 

Sir John Fortescue (§ 144) boasts of their prosperity, as compared 
with that of the French peasantry : " They drink no water, unless at 
times by way of penance. They are fed in great abundance with all kinds 
of flesh and fish. They are clothed throughout in good woolens. . . . 
Every one, according to his rank, hath all things needful to make life easy 
and happy." 

The large landlords had been relatively less prosperous. 
Since the rise of their old laborers out of villeinage, their land 
was no longer a source of wealth. Indeed, they were "land- 
poor." They paid high wages, while, under the wasteful com- 
mon-field system, crops were small (§ 36). 

But by 1450 a change had begun which was to create a new 
prosperity for the large holders and cruelly to depress the 
smaller holders. This change is connected with the process 
of "inclosures" for sheep-raising. There was a steady de- 
mand for wool at good prices, to supply the Flemish markets 
(§ 162), and enterprising landlords began to raise sheep instead 



256 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§234 

of grain. Large flocks could be cared for by a few hands, so 
that the high wages mattered less ; and profits proved so en- 
ticing that soon there was a mad rush into the new industry. 
But sheep-raising called for large tracts of laud. It was pos- 
sible only for the large landholders; and even these were 
obliged to hedge in their share of the common " fields." There- 
fore, as far as possible, they turned out the small tenants, whose 
holdings interfered with such " inclosures," and often they 
inclosed also the woodlands and meadows, in disregard of 
ancient rights of common pasture. 

Some small tenants were protected by the courts, on the 
ground that they had a right to their holdings as long as they 
paid the customary rents, shown in the copyroll of the manor. 
This class were known as " copyholders." They ranked next 
to the freeholders in dignity, and probably exceeded them in 
number. Below them came various classes of " leaseholders," 
who could be turned off whenever their leases ran out, and 
also a class of "tenants at will," who could be evicted at any 
time. Even the copyholders seem to have found the courts a 
poor defense against the greed of the wealthy classes, and the 
freeholders themselves often found it best to sell, however 
much they wished to keep their holdings. 

Sir Thomas More, for a time chief minister of Henry VHI, lamented 
these conditions bitterly: "A careless and unsatiable cormorant may 
compass about and inclose many thousand acres within one pale, and the 
husbandmen be thrust out of their own ; or else by fraud, or violent 
oppression, or by wrongs and injuries, they be so worried that they be 
compelled to sell. . . . They [the landlords] throw down houses ; they 
pluck down towns [villages], and leave nothing standing but only the 
church, to be made a sheep-house." ^ 

StA.tesmen bewailed that sheep should take the place of the 
yeomanry who had won Crecy and Poitiers, and who. Bacon 
said, were also " the backbone of the revenue " ; and from 1488 
to 1600 the government made many attempts by laws to check 

1 Of. Ancient History, §§ 397, 398. Mere's Utopia may be assigned for a 
special report. See also page 238, Note 2, for Sir Thomas More. 



§ 234J INCLOSURES IN THE PRECEDING CENTURY. 257 

inclosures.* But all such legislation was ineffective. Neither 
did popular riots and insurrections avail anything.^ The con- 
fiscation of the monastery lands and their transfer into the 
hands of a new landlord class gave fresh impetus to the in- 
closure movement ; and it went on until the profits of sheep- 
raising and grain-raising found a level. 

This had come to pass by 1600, when grain had risen in 
value, because of the rapid growth of population in the towns. 
But meantime multitudes of villages had been swept away and 
half of all those in England had been injured.® Multitudes of 
the evicted peasantry became '' sturdy beggars," or tramps,^ to 
terrorize the rural districts ; and the laborers who were not 
evicted found that prices for their food and clothing rose twice 
as fast as their wages did. 

Through these changes, however, the prosperity of the 
larger landowners was restored, and a new landed gentry arose, 
to take the lead in society and politics. 

^ Special report upon these attempts. 

2 There were a series of these risings in the reigns of Henry VHI and 
Edward VI. Tliey were usually connected with dissatisfaction at the religious 
changes made by the government ; but it is plain that the fundamental cause 
was the discontent caused by inclosui-es. Advanced students may be assigned 
these risings, or, at least, Kett's rising, for a special report. 

3 This was one reason why so many honest Englishmen were so ready to 
try their fortunes in colonizing America. John Winthrop, the great Puritan 
leader, declared that England "grows weary of her inhabitants, so as man 
who is the most precious of God's creatures, is here more vile and base than 
the earth we tread upon and of less prize among us than a horse or an ox." 

* Of these the justices often hung large batches without trial. It is esti- 
mated that in the century of Elizabeth and Shakspere seventy thousand " beg- 
gars " were executed in fifty years. Cf. Sir Thomas More's piteous picture: 
"By one means or another, either by hook or by crook, they must needs 
depart, poor wretched souls — men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless chil- 
dren, widows, woful mothers with young babes. . . . All their household 
stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale, yet being 
suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it for a thing of nought. And 
when they have wandered till that be spent, what can they then else do but 
steal, and then justly, pardy,. be hanged, or else go about begging? And yet 
then also they be cast into prison as vagabonds, because they go about and 
work not, — whom no man will set to work though they never so willingly 
proffer themselves thereto." 



258 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 235 

After 1550, the inclosures were less rapid, and from 1550 to 1640 the 
movement changed its character. It ceased to be a landlord movement 
for sheep-farming. It became an arrangement among the small holders 
whereby, in place of his thirty or so scattered acre strips, each received 
three or four compact holdings, which he might fence in and till in his 
own way. In the end, this was to lead to improved methods of farming, 
and, no doubt, it helped at once to develop more individuality and self- 
reliance than the system of common cultivation could have done, and so 
to produce the yeomen, who, when imbued with the stern teachings of 
Calvinism, were to make Cromwell's Ironsides (§ 245). 

235. The Economic Change in the Towns — Meantime, so far as 
the national welfare was concerned, tlie sufferings of tlie agri- 
cultural population had been more than offset by the growth of 
the towns, with a new prosperity resting upon home manufac- 
tures and foreign trade. From the time of Edward IV, the 
kings had made it their especial care to favor the towns and 
their industries. Skilled workmen, driven from the Nether- 
lands by the Spanish wars and from France by the persecution 
of the Huguenots, were welcomed gladly and given many 
favors. Thus manufactures had grown up. In Elizabeth's 
day, English wool was no longer sold to Flanders. It was 
worked up at home, the manufacture giving employment to 
great numbers of workmen ;^ and then the finished product was 
sold, with other commodities, in foreign markets, by English 
merchants.^ These "merchants" had so increased in number 
and wealth that practically they made a new class in English 
society. About 1350 a royal inquiry could find a list of only 
169 important merchants in England. In 1601 more than 
twenty times that number were engaged in the Holland trade 
alone. By purchase of land and by royal gifts from the con- 
fiscated church property, the members of this class rose into a 

1 The introduction of such new industries finally absorbed the classes 
evicted from the land by inclosures. 

2 A " merchant " was a trader who sent goods to a foreign country. Com- 
panies were formed to trade to Russia, or India, or other distant parts of the 
world ; and sometimes a single merchant owned a considerable fleet of ships 
for such trade (cf. Shakspere's Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice). 



§236] JAMES I — RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS. 259 

new gentry, whose capital and energy helped to restore pros- 
perity to the land. 

Two features of the new town life call for attention. (1) The gild 
system was rapidly breaking down and was being replaced by the 
" domestic system " of manufactures. The work was carried on, as be- 
fore, by masters, journeymen, and apprentices ; but the gap between 
masters and journeymen was growing, and in the absence of the strict 
gild supervision, there was greater freedom as to methods.^ Indeed the 
old towns, where the gild regulations to some degree remained in force, 
began to be replaced as manufacturing centers by new towns without such 
checks on individual capitalists. 

(2) The king's authority was extended. Trade and manufacture, for- 
merly regulated by single towns and their gilds, had now become matters 
of national concern and were regulated, so far as they were controlled at 
all, with paternal interest and anxiety by the king or Parliament. Eoyal 
proclamations fixed the number of pence for which a fat goose might be 
sold at Christmas or in midsummer, established a certain standard for 
foods, and tried to prescribe the best methods of manufacture. It is in- 
teresting to see that in general men felt it proper and natural for the 
government to attend to such matters. 



II. RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS UNDER THE 
EARLY STUARTS. 

At every moment some one country more than any other represents the 
future and the welfare of mankind. — Emerson. 

236. The Religious Situation at the Accession of James I. — 

English politics in the seventeenth century were concerned 
largely with questions of religion. The Church of England 
contained a large Puritan element, which for a time seemed 
about to get control of the organization. This " Low Church " 
wing did not wish to separate church and state, but only to 
carry the church farther from the forms of Catholicism and to 
secure a more serious morality. There was also a Presbyterian 
element, which wished to change the organization, but which 
did not count for much in England until the Civil War (§ 245), 

1 The change corresponds in some measure to the change in agriculture 
from common to individual tillage. 



260 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 237 

though in Scotland it had already won control, under its 
great preacher, John Knox. Moreover, in Elizabeth's day, 
there had appeared in England a few small bands of Independ- 
ents, or " Separatists," so called because they believed that 
each church should be a separate religious community, ruling 
itself independently of the state and of other churches. These 
Independents were the Puritans of the Puritans. They were 
the germs of later Congregationalism, Elizabeth persecuted 
them savagely, and her successor continued that policy. Some 
of the Independent churches fled to Holland; and one of them, 
from Scrooby in northern England, after staying several years 
at Leyden, founded Plymouth in America (1620). 

237. The Political Situation at the Accession of James I. — ■ 
Constitutional liberty in England had fallen low under the 
Tudors ; ^ but, after all, Henry VIII and Elizabeth had ruled 
absolutely, only because they made use of constitutional forms 
and because they possessed a shrewd tact which taught them 
just where to stop. Moreover, toward the close of Elizabeth's 
long reign, when foreign perils were past, the tone of Parlia- 
ment began to rise again. Men spoke boldly of the popular 
checks upon the royal power. Parliament asserted its right 
to discuss matters of government, and Parliament and the 
courts forced the great Queen to give up the practice of grant- 
ing monopolies.^ It was plain to keen observers that only the 
reverence for Elizabeth's age and sex, and the gratitude due 
her for her great services to the kingdom, held off an open 
clash between the sovereign and Parliament. Upon her death, 
the clash began, — to last through eighty -five years. 

1 No measure proposed by the crown could become law without consent of 
Parliament, and that body controlled all new grants of money. But the mon- 
arch (or his ministers) prepared nearly all measures that came before Parlia- 
ment; he could veto any act of Parliament ; and, after a law had been made, 
he could virtually nullify it by special proclamations. Moreover, the mon- 
arch could, upon occasion, resort to violence against individuals, and so it was 
extremely hazardous for any one persistently to oppose him. See an excellent 
statement in Andrews' England, 308-310. 

2 Special report upon the dispute over monopolies. 



§238] JAMES I — POLITICAL CONDITIONS. 261 

Elizabeth was succeeded by her relative James I (James 
Stuart), already King of Scotland. James was learned, 
pedantic, and conceited, — " the wisest fool in Christendom," 
as Henry IV of France called him. He sincerely believed in 
the " divine right " of kings : that is, he believed that the king, 
as God's anointed, was the source of law and could not himself 
be controlled by law. James and his son not only practised 
absolutism, but they also preached it on every occasion. 
They were despots on principle, and cared for the forms, as well 
as the reality, of absolutism. Naturally, the nation which had 
been growing restive under the beneficent, elastic tyranny of 
the great Tudors, soon rose in fierce opposition against the 
noisy, uncompromising, needless tyranny of the weak Stuarts. 

Prom 1603, when the first James mounted the throne, until 
1688, when his grandson, the second James, ignorainiously 
ran away from it, England was constantly engaged in strife be- 
tween this "divine right" of kings and the right of the people. 
Through all that seventeenth century, too, this little patch of 
land was the last remaining battle ground for political liberty. 
In all other important states, — in Spain, in France, in Austria, 
in the Scandinavian lands, in the petty principalities of Ger- 
many and Italy, — despotism was supreme. In England both 
sides recognized the fact. Said the second Stuart king, 
Charles I, in a crisis of his reign, " I am ashamed that my 
cousins of France and Spain should have completed what I have 
scarce begun"; and at the same time a patriot exclaimed in 
fervent exhortation to his party, " England is the last country 
which retains her ancient liberties ; let them not perish now." 

238. The Issue defined, and the Parties. — The issue was soon 
stated. In the first few weeks of his new sovereignty, James 
gave several practical proofs of his disregard for law and of 
his arbitrary temper ; ^ and then in a famous utterance, on a 

^ On his royal entry from Scotland, James ordered a thief to he hung 
without trial ; and when he summoned his first Parliament he ordered that 
contested elections should he settled, not by Parliament, but by his courts. 
Liberal Englishmen resented these things fiercely. 



262 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 238 

solemn occasion, he summed up his theory : " As it is atheism 
and blasphemy in a creature to dispute what God can do, so it 
is presumption and high contempt in a subject to question 
what a king can do." This became the tone of the court party. 
About this time Dr. Cowell of Cambridge University published 
a Law Dictionary, The Interpreter, in which under the title 
"King" it was stated, "He is above the law by his absolute 
power, and though he do admit the estates into counsel, it is 
only by his benignity." ^ 

When Parliament assembled, it took the first chance to 
answer these new . claims. The Speaker of the Commons, 
replying to the King's opening address, in place of the usual 
formal expression of grateful thanks to his majesty, reminded 
James sharply of his limited powers. "JSTew laws," said 
the Speaker, "cannot be instituted, nor imperfect laws 
reformed ... by any other power than this high court of 
Parliament." Parliament continued in this tone. It gave 
money grudgingly, and it soon addressed to the King an 
"Apology," stating the parliamentary doctrine. After de- 
claring that the King must have been misled by misinformed 
persons, or he could not have held such views of the English 
government as he had expressed, the statement continues, " that 
the privileges and liberties of Parliament are their right and 
inheritance, no less than their lands and goods ; that to with- 
hold them is to wrong the whole realm; that in this session 
the privileges of this house have been more universally im- 
pugned than ever before since the beginning of Parliaments." 

The struggle so declared, continued for forty years before it became 
war. This period of constitutional wrangling falls into four broad divi- 
sions, — the reign of James I (1603-1625), the first three Parliaments of 
Charles I (1625-1629), the period of "No Parliament" (1629-1640), and 
the early period (1640-1642) of the Long Parliament (§§ 239-244). 

There were, as yet, no organized political parties. But there was a 
"court party," devoted to the royal power, consisting of most of the 



1 Soon afterward Parliament showed a determination to take stern action 
against Cowell, and so the copies of the work were called in and destroyed. 



§239] JAMES I — POLITICAL CONDITIONS. 263 

nobles and of the "High Church" clergy, and an opposition "country- 
party," consisting of the mass of country gentry, some Puritan nobles, 
and the Puritan element generally. 

239. Constitutional Wrangling during the Reign of James I. — 

Throughout James' reign Parliaments met but rarely, and 
would have met still less often, had it not been that the waste- 
ful extravagance of the court kept the King in need of nioney.^ 
Every session of Parliament was marked by some clash between 
the King and that body. James succeeded in turning the law 
courts into his tools, by making it plain that he would dismiss 
every judge who would not act and think as he wished (an 
interference with the courts wholly new in English history); 
but Parliament on the whole held its own. It insisted stub- 
bornly on its control of taxation, on freedom of speech, and on 
its right to impeach the King's ministers. James became 
exceedingly unpopular toward the close of his reign, because 
he failed to support his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine in 
Germany, the Protestant leader in the opening of the Thirty 
Years' Wai' (§ 230), and because he wished his son Charles to 
marry a Spanish princess.^ However, Charles was personally 
insulted by the Spanish court, and in the last year of James' 

1 The economic revolution noted in § 234 had decreased the wealth of the 
kings (whose property was in land) , while the rise in prices and the increas- 
ing duties of the government called for a larger expenditure. Thus Elizabeth 
and James were really poor. This fact is the key to much of the history of 
the time. 

2 In James' third Parliament (1621), the Commons had begun to express 
dissatisfaction with the marriage that James had planned. James sharply 
forbade such discussion. " Let us resort to our prayers," said one of the 
members, "and then consider this great business." The outcome of the con- 
sideration was a resolution, " that the liberties, privileges, and jurisdictions of 
Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright of the subjects of Eng- 
land, and that the arduous and urgent affairs concerning the King, the state, 
the church, the defense of the realm, the making and maintenance of laws, 
and the redress of grievances, which happen daily within this realm, are 
proper subjects for debate in Parliament; and that in the handling and pro- 
ceeding of those businesses, every member of the Commons . . . has freedom 
of speech ... to bring to conclusion the same." James tore out this page of 
the records and dissolved Parliament. 



264 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 240 

life, tlie Prince succeeded in forcing him into war with Spain, 
to the great joy of the nation. 

240. The Early Parliaments of Charles I. —In March, 1625, 
in the midst of shame and disgrace because of mismanage- 
ment of the war, James died. In May, Charles I met his first 
Parliament. He quarreled with it at once, dissolved it, and 
turned to an eager prosecution of the war, trusting to win 
the nation to his side by glorious victory over the hereditary 
enemy. Ignominious failure, instead, forced him to meet his 
second Parliament in 1626. 

It is now that Sir John Eliot stands forward as a leader of 
the patriots. Eliot is the "first great commoner." In her 
earlier struggles with her kings, England had depended upon 
her nobles for leaders. The Wars of the Eoses had annihilated 
the old nobility, and the new nobles could never assume the 
old leadership. The gentry, however, had been rising in 
importance, and the Tudor monarchs had begun to use them 
as ministers of the crown. Now one of this class was to lead 
the opposition to the crown. Eliot was a Cornish gentleman, 
thirty-three years of age, courtly in manner, ardent and poetic 
in temper. His mind .was enriched by all the culture of the 
time, and afterward in weary years of imprisonment he could 
find consolation in his Tacitus, Livy, Epictetus, and Seneca. 
He was an athlete and a courtier, and at the same time a 
deeply religious Puritan ; but his mind was never tinged with 
the somber feeling of the later Puritanism.^ 

Eliot stood for the control of the King's ministers by Parlia- 
ment. Everything else, he saw, was^ likely to prove worthless, 
if the executive could not be held responsible. The king's 
person could not be so held, except by revolution and deposi- 
tion ; but his ministers might be impeached and punished ; 
and, under fear of this, they might be held in control. In 

1 This passage, and much of the following account of Eliot's work, is con- 
densed from Green's treatment of Eliot in his History of the English People. 
Students who can read further will find Forster's Life of Eliot an intensely- 
interesting hook. 



§241] CHARLES I— BENEVOLENCES. 265 

pursuance of this principle, Eliot persuaded the Commons to 
impeach the Duke of Buckingham, the King's favorite and the 
instrument of much past tyranny. Charles stopped the pro- 
ceedings by casting Eliot into prison and dissolving Parliament. 
241. Charles' Attempts at Benevolences and Forced Loans. — 
The King fell back upon "benevolences," or the begging of 
"free gifts," to raise a revenue. These benevolences had 
been asked occasionally from individual men of wealth ever 
since the Wars of the Roses, but now they were asked of all 
tax payers, through the county courts. County after county 
refused to give a penny, often with cheers for Parliament. 
Some sheriffs refused to ask for the "free gift." The County 
of Cornwall, Sir John Eliot's county, answered "that if they 
had but two kine, they would sell one to supply his majesty, — ■ 
in a parliamentary tvay." Charles passed to a " forced loan," 
— virtually a tax levied by the usual tax machinery, — a tax 
thinly disguised by the false promise of repayment. Force 
and persuasion were both used. Some of the pulpits, manned 
now by the anti-Puritan party, rang with the cry of " passive 
obedience " and the doctrine that to resist the king was eternal 
damnation. As a patriot of the time put it, this section of 
the clergy " improved the highwayman's formula into Your 
money or your life eternal." More immediate penalties, how- 
ever, were resorted to. Poor freeholders who refused to pay 
were "pressed" into the navy, or a turbulent soldiery was 
quartered in their defenseless homes ; and two hundred 
English gentlemen were confined in disgraceful prisons, to 
subdue their obstinacy. Among these gentlemen was a young 
squire who had based his refusal upon a clause in Magna 
Carta and who was rewarded with so close an imprisonment, 
that, his kinsman tells us, " he never did look the same man 
after." This was John Hampden's introduction into the com- 
pany of patriots. Equal heroism was shown by hundreds 
of poorer unknown men. George Radcliffe wrote from his 
prison to his " right dear and loving wife," who was eager to 
have him submit in time to have Christmas with her, " Shall 



266 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 242 

it be thought I prejudice the public cause by beginning to 
conform, whicli none yet hath done of all that have been 
committed, save only two poor men, a butcher and another, 
and they hooted at like owls among their neighbors?" 

Thus the forced loan raised little revenue ; and with an arma- 
ment poorly fitted out, Buckingham sailed against France, with 
which England was now at war. For the third time in four 
years an English army was wasted to no purpose ; and, sunk in 
debt and shame, Charles met his third Parliament in 1628. 

242. The "Petition of Right": Eliot's Final Struggle. — The 
imprisoned country gentlemen were released before the elec- 
tions, and some seventy of them (ail who appeared as candi- 
dates) sat in the new Parliament, in spite of the royal efforts 
to prevent their election. 

Before Parliament met, a caucus of the country leaders 
decided, against Eliot's desire, not to press the action against 
Buckingham, but to try to obtain some guarantee for their 
personal liberties, which had just been so seriously threatened. 
For two months the Commons debated the recent infringe- 
ments of English liberties and some way to provide security. 
The King offered to give his word that such things should 
not occur again, but was told that his oath had already 
been given at his coronation. Finally the house passed the 
Petition of Right, a document that ranks almost with Magna 
Carta in the history of English liberty. This great law first 
recited the ancient English statutes, from Magna Carta down, 
against arbitrary imprisonment, arbitrary taxation, quartering 
of soldiery upon the people in time of peace, and against 
forced loans and benevolences ; then it named the frequent 
violation of right in these respects in recent years ; and finally 
it declared all such infringements illegal. The Lords tried to 
save the King's dignity by adding an evasive clause to the 
effect that it was not intended to interfere with " that sovereign 
power wherewith your majesty is entrusted." But the Com- 
mons rejected the amendment after a striking debate. " Sov- 
ereign power," said one, " would mean power above condition 5 



§242] THE PETITION OF RIGHT, 267 

tliej could not leave the King that, for he had never had it." ' 
" The King's person I will call sovereign," said another, '•' but 
not his power " ; and a third added, " Magna Carta is such a 
fellow that he will have no sovereign." Finally, the Lords, 
too, passed the Petition, and Charles, after evasive delays, felt 
compelled to sign it. 

In form, the document was a petition: in fact, when passed 
and assented . to by the King, it became a revision of the con- 
stitution down to date, so far as the personal rights of English- 
men were concerned." Almost at once, however, in recess of 
Parliament, Charles broke the provisions of the Petition;^ and 
he also made it clear that through his appointees, the bishops, 
he intended to introduce such changes as he wished into the 
church, in favor of the ^' High Church " party. Parliament 
reassembled in bitter humor. Heedless of the King's pleading 
for money, it affirmed its own control over religion to be supreme 
in England,* and then turned to punish the officers who had 
acted as the King's agents in the recent infringements of the 
Petition of Right. Proceedings were stopped by the Speaker's 
announcing that he had the King's command to adjourn the 
House. Men knew that it would not be permitted to meet 
again, and there followed a striking scene. The Speaker was 
thrust back into his chair and held there by two of the 
patriots; the doors were locked against the King's messenger; 
and Eliot in a ringing speech moved a series of resolutions, 
which were to form the platform of the liberal party in the 
dark years to come. Tumult gathered. Eoyalist members 

1 Mr. Gardiner questions the correctness of this reading; hut it is at least 
In perfect liarmony with tlie spirit of the rest of the dehate. 

2 For the document and critical comments, see Hill's Liberty Documents. 

3 Especially by levying customs at the ports, by royal order merely. 

^ This was the occasion for Eliot's daring speech: " There is a custom in 
the Eastern churches of standing at the repetition of the creed, to testify their 
purpose to maintain it, — not only with tlie body upright, but with the sword 
drawn. Give me leave to call that custom very commendable." And the 
Commons voted Eliot's resolution, — that they would resist all innovation in 
religion, if need be, with their lives, — by a standing vote, leaning upon their 
loosened swords. 



268 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. [§ 243 

cried, Traitor ! Traitor ! Swords were drawn. The uslier 
pounded at tlie door with the royal message of dissolution. 
But the bulk of the members sternly voted the resolutions, 
declaring traitors to England any one who should bring in 
innovations in religion without the consent of Parliament, any 
minister who should advise the illegal levy of taxes, any officer 
who should aid in their collection, and every citizen who should 
voluntarily pay them. And in the moment's hush, when the 
great deed was done, Eliot's voice was heard once more, and for 
the last time, in that hall : " For myself, I further protest, as I 
am a gentleman, if my fortune be ever again to meet in this 
honorable assembly, where I now leave off, I will begin again." 
Then the doors swung open, and the angry crowd surged out. 
Eliot passed to the Tower, to die there a prisoner four years 
later. But Eliot's friends remembered his words : when another 
Parliament did meet, where he had left off, they began again. 

Eliot could have had his liberty if he had bent to acknowledge himself 
wrong. His wife died ; friends fell away ; consumption attacked him, 
and his enemies knew that he must yield or die. His son petitioned for 
his release, on the ground that doctors had certified that without it he could 
not live. The King refused. " Though Sir John be brought low in body, 
yet is he as high and lofty in mind as ever." A month later, Eliot was 
dead. His son presented another petition, that he might have his father's 
body for burial. The request was refused, and there was inscribed on 
the paper, —a mean act of a mean king, — "Let Sir John's body be 
buried in the church of that parish where he died." So Eliot's body rests 
in the Tower, and the spot is not marked. 

243. Eleven Years of " Ko Parliament." — On the dissolution 
of the third Parliament of Charles, England entered a gloomy 
period. The King adopted a policy of ruling by royal edicts, 
and no Parliament met for eleven years, 1629-1640. During 
this period, in many ways, the government sought the welfare of 
the nation, and in particular it gave attention to the needs of 
the poor ; but its methods were thoroughly despotic and bad. 

To avoid the necessity of calling Parliaments, Charles prac- 
tised rigid economy. Additional financial resources were in- 
vented, and an ancient demand upon seacoast counties to 



§243] ELEVEN YEARS OF NO PARLIAMENT. 269 

furnisli ships for the national navy in time of invasion, was 
stretched into a precedent for a "ship-money tax" for all 
England in time of peace. John Hampden refused to pay 
the twenty shillings assessed upon his lands, and the famous 
" ship-money case " went to the courts (1637). The slavish 
judges decided for the King, as had been expected, and the 
King's friends were jubilant, seeing in the new tax "an ever- 
lasting supply on all occasions"; but Hampden's purpose was 
achieved. He had won a moral victory. The twelve-day argu- 
ment of the lawyers attracted wide attention, and the court in 
its decision was compelled to state the theory of despotism in 
its naked hideousness, declaring that there was no power to 
check the king's authority over his subjects, — their persons 
or their money, — " For," said the Chief Justice, " no act of 
Parliament makes any difference." The theory of the Stuart 
rule was made clear to all men. It remained to see how long 
England would endure it. 

The chief servants of the crown during this period were 
Archbishop Laud and Tliomas Wenttvorth. Wentworth had 
been a member of the country group and had been one of the 
leaders in securing the Petition of E-ight ; but soon afterward 
he passed over to the side of the King and later he was 
rewarded by the earldom of Strafford. His old associates 
regarded him as an apostate from the cause of liberty; but 
it is possible that he sincerely expected to secure the good of 
England through upholding the royal power. Certainly he 
was a political genius. He reduced turbulent Ireland to order, 
and ruled there with an iron hand, — drilling an army against 
the day of reckoning he foresaw. Laud was an extreme High 
Churchman and a conscientious bigot. He reformed the disci- 
pline of the church and ennobled the ritual; but he persecuted •*• 
the Puritan clergy cruelly, with imprisonment and even with 

1 As a result of this and of the political discouragement, that sect founded 
the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Practically all the immigration this col- 
ony received came in the ten years, 1630-1640, while Charles ruled without 
Parliament. 



270 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. [§ 244 

mutilation, and in 1638 he tried to force Episcopacy upon 
Presbyterian Scotland.^ The Scots rose, signed a "covenant" 
to defend their religion, and marched to the border. Charles' 
system of absolutism fell at a breath, like a house of cards. 
Weutworth's Irish troops proved unreliable. England would 
give no help without a Parliament. Charles summoned a Par- 
liament, and quarreled with it. The Scots advanced into Eng- 
land, and the King called a new Parliament (November, 1640), 
to be known in history as the Long Parliament. 

244. The Long Parliament, to the Civil War. — The great 
leaders of the Long Parliament were the commoners Pym, 
Hampden, Sir Harry Vane,^ St. John, Holies, and, somewhat 
later, Cromwell. Pym succeeded to the place of Eliot, and at an 
early date indicated that the Commons were the real rulers of 
England. When the Lords showed inclination to delay reform, 
he brought them to time by his veiled threat : he " should be 
sorry," he said, " if the House of Commons had to save Eng- 
land alone.'' 

The Scots remained encamped in England, — virtually allies 
of the Parliament. Thus the King had no resource but to 
assent to Parliament's bills. Parliament secured itself by a 
law that it could be dissolved only by its own vote, and then 
took up its serious program. Its purpose was first to punish 
past tyranny, and secondly to prevent its recurrence. For the 
first purpose, it began where Eliot had left off, and sternly put 
into action the principles of his last resolutions. Laud, who 
had " brought in innovations in religion," and Wentworth, who 
had advised and helped carry out the King's policy, were con- 
demned to death as traitors ; the lawyers who had advised ship- 
money and the judges who had declared it legal were cast into 
prison or driven into banishment ; and forty committees were 



1 Scotland had been joined to England when her King James had hecome 
King of England, but each country had its own Parliament, laws, and church : 
the union was "personal," and consisted in the fact that the two countries 
had the same king. This remained the theory until 1707 (§ 281 a). 

2 Vane had spent some time in Massachusetts and had been governor there. 



§244] THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 271 

appointed, one for eacli county, to secure the punishment of 
the lesser officers concerned in tlie illegal acts of the govern- 
ment. The martyrs whom the tyranny of Charles and Laud 
had imprisoned were freed from their dungeons and welcomed 
to London by rejoicing multitudes, who strewed flowers beneath 
the feet of their advancing horses. Parliament's second pur- 
pose was to some degree attained by abolishing the courts of 
the Star Chamber and the High Commission, extraordinary 
judicial bodies, through which Charles and Laud had worked.^ 
These measures filled the first year,^ and so far Parliament 
had been almost a unit. But now a split began. A Presbyte- 
rian and an Independent party (the " Root and Branch " men, 
with Vane and Cromwell for leaders) began to attack Episco- 
pacy itself ; and other radical leaders, like Pym and Hampden, 
felt it necessary to secure further political safeguards against 
the King, since they could not trust his promises. On the 
other hand, a moderate party who dreaded anarchy, and a 
church party who feared for Episcopacy, drew toward the 
King. These elements were led by Falkland and Hyde, two of 
the noblest of English patriots. Meantime Charles was sus- 
pected, justly, of plotting with the Irish and the army ; and 
terrible news of a massacre of English Puritans in Ireland, by 
a native rising, brought about decisive action in Parliament. 
Pym introduced a Grand Remonstrance, a series of resolutions 
appealing to the country for further support against the King 
and the High Church party, and proposing two definite meas- 
ures: (1) a synod of clergy to reform the church, and (2) par- 
liamentary approval of the King's choice of ministers. After 
an all-day and almost all-night bitter debate, the Commons 
adopted the Eemonstrance (November 22, 1641) by the narrow 
majority of eleven votes, amid a scene of wild confusion. 

1 These peculiar courts dated from Tudor times, and had been designed, 
the first to control the great nobles, and the second to carry through the 
separation from Eome; but Charles had used them for general political 
tyranny against the nation. They had no juries, and the Star Chamber cor- 
responded in many ways to the French administrative courts (§ 448). 

2 The trial of Laud came later; but he was already a prisoner. 



272 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 245 

Then the moderate party passed over unreservedly to the 
King's side, and a little later Charles tried to reverse the 
small majority against him in the House, and to intimidate 
the Radicals, by seizing five radical leaders on a charge of 
treason.^ The attempt failed and the opposition was tremen- 
dously strengthened. London rose in arms to protect Parlia- 
ment. Parliament demanded control of the militia and of the 
education of the royal princes. Charles withdrew from the 
city and raised the standard of civil war (1642). 

III. THE GKEAT REBELLION AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 

245. The Civil War. — Many who had gone with Parliament 
in all its earlier reform, now chose the King's side rather than 
rebellion and the danger of anarchy. The majority of the 
gentry sided with the King, while in general the trading and 
manufacturing classes and the yeomanry fought for Parliament. 
At the same time it must be remembered that the struggle was 
a true " civil war," dividing families and old friends.^ 

At first Charles was successful. The shop-boys of the city 
trainbands could not stand before the chivalry of the "Cava- 
liers,"^ and the Puritan nobles, who led the parliamentary 
armies, were afraid to conquer their king too completely. Both 
conditions were soon changed. Cromicell, a colonel in the par- 
liamentary army, had raised a troop known as Ironsides. He 
had seen that the only force Parliament could oppose to the 
traditional bravery of the English gentleman was the religious 
enthusiasm of the extreme Puritans. Accordingly, he had 
drawn his recruits from the Independents of the east of 

1 Special report : the story of the attempt. 

2 An lEStructive contrast may he drawn hetween the civilized nature of 
this war and the character of tlie Thirty Years' War in Germany, which was 
going on at the same time. In England, non-combatants were rarely molested, 
and as a rule property rights were respected. 

3 The King's party took the name, "Cavaliers," from the court nobles; 
while the Parliamentarians were called " Round Heads," in derision, from the 
cropped hair of the London 'prentice lads. The portrait of Cromwell (page 
275) shows, however, that Puritan gentlemen did not crop their hair. 



§246] 



THE CIVIL WAK. 



273 



England, — mostly yeomen farmers. They were men of godly 
lives, free from all the usual license of a camp. They prayed 
before battle, and then charged, with the old Hebrew battle 
psalms iipon their lips. Mainly by these troops the great 
battle of Marston Moor was won. Then Cromwell was put in 
chief command, and he re- 
organized the whole army 
upon this " New Model." 
Soon after, the victory of 
Nasehy virtually closed the 
war (1645). 

Says John Fiske : " If we con- 
sider merely its territorial area or 
the number of men slain, the war 
of the English Parliament against 
Charles I seems a trivial affair, 
contrasted with the gigantic but 
comparatively insignificant work 
of barbarians like Genghis Khan 
or Tamerlane ; but if we consider 
the moral and political issues in- 
volved, and the influence of the 
struggle on the future welfare of 
mankind, we soon come to see that 
there never was a conflict of more 
world-wide significance than that 
from which Oliver Cromwell came 

out victorious. ... To speak of Naseby and Marston Moor as merely 
English victories, would be as absurd as to restrict the significance of 
Gettysburg to the state of Pennsylvania. If ever there were men who 
laid down their lives in the cause of all mankind, it was those grim old 
Ironsides, whose watchwords were texts from Holy Writ, and whose battle- 
cries were hymns of praise." 

246. Parliament and the Army: Pride's Purge. — When the 
war began, the Episcopalian party in Parliament had with- 
drawn to join the King, and the Presbyterians were left in 
control. Then, to buy the aid of the Scots, Parliament made 
the English church Presbyterian, and it wished to enforce unity 




Charles I. — After a famous painting 
toy Van Dyck. 



274 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§247 

of belief and worship along Presbyterian lines. Dissensions 
at once broke out, upon this issue, between Parliament and the 
Independents of the army. Charles, now a prisoner, sought to 
play off each party against the other, — intending, as he wrote 
to his wife, to keep promises to neither.^ The result was a 
series of risings, Presbyterian and Royalist, and a " Second 
Civil War." The New Model army quickly stamped out the 
risings, and purged Parliament by military force^^ leaving only 
a '' Rump " of Independents (December, 1648). 

247. England a Republic. — The remnant of the Commons 
abolished monarchy and the House of Lords, and set up a 
Republic under the name of tlie Commonwealth (1649). " The 
people," they declared, in a famous statement of principle, 
" are, under God, the original of all just power; and the Com- 
mons of England in Parliament assembled, being chosen by the 
people, have the supreme power in this nation." 

Under the " Commonwealth," the Long Parliament continued 
to form the government, without reelection. Early in the year 
it had brought the deposed King to trial for treason, and 
Charles had been executed January 30, dying with better grace 
than he had lived. The Scots, unprepared for this extreme action 
and angered at the overthrow of Presbyterianism, crowned the 
son of the dead king as Charles II, and invaded England to 
place him on the throne. Cromwell crushed them at Worcester, 
and the young "King of the Scots" escaped to the continent. 

248. The Protectorate. — Cromwell was now anxious for a 
new Parliament and a settlement of the constitution. The 
Rump refused to dissolve, and finally Cromwell dispersed it 
with his troopers (1653). He then made some further sincere 

1 " Be quite easy," Charles wrote, with shameless and characteristic duplic- 
ity, " as to the concessions I may grant. When the time comes I shall know 
very well how to treat these rogues, and, instead of a silken garter, I will fit 
them with a hempen halter." 

2 This military expulsion of the Presbyterian majority from Parliament is 
known as Pride's Purge, from the name of the officer who carried out the 
order. Vane was the leader of Parliament after this event. Pym and Hamp- 
den were already dead. 



1 



248] 



COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE. 



275 



efforts to secure a new constitution through a national con- 
vention ; but tiie body chosen proved unwise and dilatory, 
and at last Cromwell and the army officers impatiently took 
the construction of the machinery of government into their own 
hands. The real difficulty was that the Independents repre- 
sented only a small minority of the nation. They were un- 
willing to surrender the re- 
sults of their victory in war, 
and so they maintained them- 
selves in despotic power by 
the discipline of the New 
Model. Cromwell assumed 
the title of Lord Protector 
(1654), and continued to 
rule as virtual dictator. In 
practice, his authority ex- 
ceeded that of any recent 
sovereign. His rule was 
stained by cruelties in Ire- 
land (as were also his mili- 
tary campaigns in that 
island),^ but it was in other 
respects wise and firm. He 
made England once more a 
Great Power, peaceful at 
home and respected abroad. 
At the best, however, his rule was the rule of the sword, not that 
of law. The great experiment of a Republic^ had failed miser- 
ably in the hands of its friends ; and on Cromwell's death, the 
nation, with wild rejoicings (1660), welcomed back Charles II. 




Cromwell. — After an engraving from 
the portrait painted by Sir Peter 
Lely. 



1 Special reports: Cromwell in Ireland; the "Instrument of Government," 
or the constitution of the protectorate. 

2 There were several interesting constitutional experiments and proposals 
by the Republican party during this period, which might be assigned to ad- 
vanced students for special reports. See especially the " Agreement of the 
People," of 1647. Cf. Hill, Liberty Documents, 78-113. 



276 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 249 

IV. THE RESTORATION AND THE REVOLUTION. 

249. The Later Stuarts. — With the restoration of the 
Stuarts, the great age of Puritanism was over. At the court 
and among the young cavaliers, the stern and somber morality 
of the Independents gave way to unbridled excesses and shame- 
ful licentiousness, with the King to set the fashion. Litera- 
ture became indescribably indecent and corrupt.^ To a great 
degree this became the tone of English society for many years, 
although of course the middle classes continued to include 
large numbers of God-fearing homes. The established church 
became again Episcopalian ; and dissenters —Protestant and 
Catholic — were cruelly persecuted. The Cavalier Parliament, 
chosen in the fervor of the welcome to the returned monarch, 
was enthusiastic for church and king, and Charles shrewdly 
kept this assembly through most of his reign (until 1679). 
Still, the great constitutional principles for which the Puritans 
had contended were victorious and Avere adopted by their old 
enemies. Even the Cavalier Parliament insisted strenuously 
on Parliament's sole right to impose taxes, to regulate the 
church, and to control foreign policy ; and Charles' second 
Parliament secured Englishmen against arbitrary imprison- 
ment, by the Habeas Corpus Act} 

Charles said lightly that he had no mind to go on his travels 
again, and at any cost he avoided a clash with Parliament. He 
was slowly building up a standing army, however, and he sold 
himself to Louis XIV, King of France, in return for subsidies. 

1 This statement applies to the court literature of the Restoration, — a con- 
siderable body of English drama. However, it should be noted that defeated 
Puritanism uttered itself nobly in just this age of political overthrow. Mil- 
ton, the great pamphleteer of the Commonwealth, who for many years had 
abandoned poetry for political writings, now, as a blind and disappointed old 
man, gave the world his famous work, Paradise Lost; and John Bunyan, a 
dissenting preacher, lying in jail under the persecuting statutes of the Cavalier 
Parliament, composed his Pilgrim's Progress. 

2 The principle of this Act is older than Magna Carta, but the Act of 
Charles' time first provided adequate machinery, much as we have it to-day, 
to enforce the principle. 



§ 250] THE RESTORATION AND THE REVOLUTION. 277 

There is reason to think that beneath his merry, careless 
exterior, Charles nursed plans of absolutism more dangerous 
than his father's ; but, if so, his death came in 1685, before he 
was ready to act. 

His brother James II was a thorough despot, and less pliable. 
James was a Catholic, and, in the interest of his oppressed 
co-religionists, he interfered with the laws and the courts in 
high-handed fashion, while he rapidly increased the standing 
army. This conduct created a wide-spread belief that he 
intended to make the English church Catholic, and so it 
brought on " the Glorious Revolution " of 1688. James' oppo- 
nents invited over William of Orange, the Stadtholder of 
Holland, husband of James' daughter Mary. When William 
landed with a small army, James found himself utterly 
deserted, even by his troops, and he fled to France. 

250. The "Glorious Revolution." — The story of the Revolu- 
tion is not a noble one. Selfishness, duplicity, and treachery 
mark every step ; and, except William of Orange, all the chief 
actors on both sides fail of our sympathy. There is no longer 
a patriot Eliot or Pym or Hampden, or a royalist Hyde or Falk- 
land. As Macaulay says, it was " an age of great measures 
and little men"; and the term "glorious," which English his- 
torians have applied to the Revolution, must be taken to. belong 
to results rather than to methods. 

Those results were of mighty import. A Convention-Parlia- 
ment declared the throne vacant, drew up the great Declaration 
of Rights, the "third great document in the Bible of English 
Liberties,"^ and elected William and Mary joint sovereigns, 
on condition of their assenting to the Declaration. Thus the 
supremacy of Parliament over the king was once more firmly 
established. The new sovereigns, like the old Lancastrians, 
had only a parliamentary title to the throne.^ 

1 The next regular Parliament turned this document into the " Bill of 
Rights." Cf. Hill's Liberty Documents. 

2 Special report : the story of the struggle between England and France, 
1690 to 1695, especially the " Battle of La Hogue." 



278 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY. [§ 251 



V. CONSTITUTIONAL GAINS. 

251. Parliamentary Control of Purse and Sword : Annual Meet- 
ings — William III ranks among England's greatest kings; but 
lie was unpopular, because a foreigner, and Ms reign was spent 
in wars against the threatening power of Louis XIV of France, 
who undertook to restore James. England entered upon a cen- 
tury in which the chief interest was foreign expansion (§ 283). 
During the first few years, however, some striking progress 
was made in the machinery of free government. 

Tlie judges were made independent of royal removal, and a 
triennial bill provided for a renewal of Parliament by fresh 
election once in three years. ^ Parliament hit also upon a 
simple device to prevent the king's abusing his power of dis- 
solving the assembly: it resolved to pass revenue bills, no 
longer for the life of the sovereign, but only for one year, and 
to defer their passage until other business had been attended 
to. In like manner, tJie Mxitiny Act, giving officers of the army 
authority over their troops, was passed only for a year. That 
\&, poiver of purse and sivord loas delegated only for a year at a 
time. Thus it became absolutely necessary for the government to 
assemble Parliament each year, and thenceforward Parliament 
has virtually fixed its own adjournments. So simply and indi- 
rectly was solved the constitutional puzzle of four centuries. 

252. Ministerial Government — Almost equally simple, though 
not so quickly perceived, was the method of solving the remain- 
ing political problem of parliamentary government, — how to 
control effectively the appointment of the king's ministers. 
Parliament could remove and punish ministers, as it had done 
at intervals since the time of the Edwards, and recently in the 
case of Strafford and Laud ; but such action could be secured 
only against notorious offenders, and it amounted almost to a 
revolution in itself. Some machinery was wanted, by which 
ministers acceptable to Parliament could be secured peaceably. 

1 In 1716 this was changed to the present seven years' term. 



§252] CONSTITUTIONAL GAINS. 279 

The desired result was accomplished indirectly, and the first 
step was made in the reign of William III. Political parties 
— Whigs and Tories — had appeared in England in the latter 
part of the reign of Charles 11.^ Since that time, they have 
never ceased to be an important element in the government, 
although they were not for a long time to acquire the impor- 
tance that political parties now have. There was no exact state- 
ment of principles, but the Whigs wished to limit the royal 
authority on every occasion, while the Tories preferred to sus- 
tain it and wished to prevent all further liberalizing of the 
constitution. At first William had tried to balance the two 
parties by keeping leaders from each among his ministers. 
But Parliament showed great jealousy of all the measures of 
the government, and there was danger of a deadlock. Then a 
shrewd political schemer suggested to the King that he 
appoint all his ministers from the Whigs, who made the 
majority in the Commons: such men would have the confi- 
dence of the House, and that body would have to support some 
positive measures, instead of blocking all proposals. William 
showed his political capacity by accepting this suggestion; 
and a little later, when the Tories secured a majority in the 
House, he carried out the principle by replacing his ministers 
with Tories. In the next century, this government by the minis- 
try became an established part of the English constitution. 

The ministers, at first, were not a compact " ministry " controlled by 
one leader, as at pi-esent, nor were they then ministers of the Commons, 
but really "ministers of the king," as they are still in name. The king 

1 The Radicals had introduced a bill to exclude from the throne the Duke of 
York, the King's brother and heir. The supporters of the hill were known 
as Exclusionists, and great petitions were sent up from the country to sup- 
port their program. The Catholics and the conservative political factions sent 
up counter-petitions expressing horror at such a proposal. Thus the friends 
and opponents of the measure became known as Petitioners and Abhorrers. 
The first were called Whigs (Whey-eaters) by their enemies, after a term 
applied to the extreme Scotch Calvinists ; and the second party were called 
Tories (bog-trotters), after the Irish rebels who supported the Catholic and 
royal policy. The division was really between the supporters of royal and 
the supporters of parliamentary sovereignty. 



280 ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 253 

had great influence in determining the majority in the Commons, both in 
the elections, and afterward by buying support with his favor and with 
appointments and money ; and oftentimes his ministry created a majority 
in the Commons instead of the elected majority creating the ministry. 
This remained true until the nineteenth century. None the less, the 
change just outlined was momentous, even at the time ; and in the middle 
of the next century, under the stupid and indifferent Georges I and II, 
the Commons really ruled England through the great minister Bohert 
Walpole. Thus a system devised to enable the king more smoothly to rule 
the Commons, became the means whereby the Commons rule the king. 

253- Act of Settlement : Royal Title dependent upon Parliament. — 

On the death of William without an heir (Mary died some years befoi'e), 
the crown passed to Anne, Mary's younger sister, in accordance with a 
previous Act of Parliament. This "Act of Settlement" further provided 
that if Anne died without offspring, the throne should pass to the German 
house of Brunswick, the nearest Protestant heirs. The Act passed over 
the son of James II, and expressly excluded Catholics from the throne. 
In pursuance of the Act of Settlement, on Anne'sdeath, George I became 
king, and his successors have followed in accordance with the same law. 
The title of the present king is based strictly on Act of Parliament. 

254. Limitations upon Progress. — Thus the seventeenth cen- 
tury seemed to have made England a free country. The vic- 
tory was not complete, however. Parliament was supreme 
over the king ; but Parliament itself was largely the posses- 
sion of the aristocracy. Owing to changes in wealth, this 
became even more marked in the next century. The real gov- 
ernment of England became a landed oligarchy, and it took 
the great parliamentary reform of the nineteenth century to 
establish popular control (§§ 531-537). 

For Further Reading. — For general works covering this period, see 
footnote 1 on page 136, Gardiner's First Two Stuarts and his Cromwell 
are brief works by the greatest authority on the period. Firth's Crom- 
well is an admirable work by a scholar whose name ranks only second 
to that of Gardiner. Morley's Cromwell and Hale's Fall of the Stuarts, 
1678-1697, are very good treatments of the later period. Jenks' Con- 
stitutional Experiments of the Commonwealth and Borgeaud's Hise of 
Democracy are readable and suggestive. There is good fiction for the 
seventeenth century, especially George MacDonald's St. George and St. 
Michael, Blackmore's Lorna Doone, and Scott's Woodstock, 



CHAPTER IV. 

FROM THE PEACE OF -WESTPHALIA TO THE FRENCH 
REVOLUTION.! 

I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 

255. Wars to maintain the Balance of Power in Europe, and to secure 
Colonial Empire. — The century of wars about religion was closed by tlie 
Peace of Westphalia. There followed a century of selfish and dynastic 
wars. The last period of the Thirty Years' War had revealed new prin- 
ciples of action. Catholic France aided Protestant North Germany, in 
order to break the power of the Hapsburgs, which had so long ringed her 
about. The Peace of Westphalia removed Spain from the leadership of 
Europe and put France in that place. It also introduced a new period 
of international politics. The chief object of most statesmen, through the 
next age, was to keep any one country from becoming too strong for the 
safety of its neighbors. This was called maintaining the Balance of Power. 
For many years France was the country that threatened that balance, 
and so league after league of other countries was organized against her. 
International morality was low and selfish, however, and commonly the 
nations were willing to let a strong Power rob a weaker neighbor, if they 
could find "compensation," and so maintain the "balance," by them- 
selves robbing some other weak state. The theory of the balance of 
power came to mean not that an unscrupulous monarch should be pre- 
vented from plundering a defenseless one, but that he must be compelled 
to share his booty with the other strong ones. 

Before 1700 the area and the objects of strife widened beyond Europe, 
and the various wars merged into a titanic struggle between France and 
England for world-empire, — with the result, toward the close of the 
period, of making England the sole great colonial power and of establish- 
ing the new American Republic. 

1 This century and a half has strongly marked characteristics (§§ 255-257). 
The period is a diflficult one, however, for young students, and perhaps this 
chapter should be read and discussed with open books, without formal recita- 
tions. At this point, the student should reread carefully §§ 4 and 5. 

281 



282 SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. [§256 

256. Absolutism within ; Dynastic Interests abroad. — Louis XIV 
of France (§ 264) is reported by legend to have once said, "I am the 
state." In his day the words might have been used truthfully by 
almost any monarch outside England. A few great rulers dominated the 
period. Indeed, the stage is almost filled by three monarchs, — Louis XIV 
of France (1643-1715), Peter the Great of Russia (1689-1725), and Frede- 
rick the Great of Prussia (1740-1786). The main influence of Peter was 
spent directly upon his own country, but Louis and Frederick belonged 
to all Europe, and the period divides itself into the Age of Louis XIV 
and the Age of Frederick II. 

Absurd as it seems to us, the personal characteristics of monarchs 
became, even more than before, mighty factors in the histories of whole 
peoples. The wars of this age were dynastic, or family, wars ; and the 
personal likings or hatreds of the princes, as well as their family interests, 
sometimes interfered curiously with devotion to the theory of a balance 
of power. 

257. Readjustment of the Map of Northern and Eastern Europe. — 
About 1700 the map of northern Europe underwent a striking transfor- 
mation. For a long time the two most powerful states there had been 
Sweden and Poland. Sweden had saved Protestantism in North Ger- 
many in the Thirty Years' War ; and, a generation later, John Sobieski, 
King of Poland, saved South Germany from the Turks by driving back 
the Mohammedan army from Vienna (1683). Notwithstanding such 
mighty services, it was still true that neither of these two Powers had 
ordinarily played a very important part in European affairs. And now 
Sweden was to shrink up, and Poland was to disappear, before two new 
Powers, Russia and Prussia, which ever since have been leading factors 
upon the European stage. 



IL THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV— FRENCH LEADERSHIP. 

258. Mazarin and the Fronde. Early Years of Louis XIV. — 

During the long minority of Louis XIV, affairs were managed 
by Cardinal Mazarin, who continued the policy of Richelieu 
(§ 229). The most important event of the period was the 
crushing of the Fronde, the last rising of the French nobles 
against the royal power (cf. § 152). 

Louis himself assumed control in 1661. At first it seemed 
as though he would continue the wise policy of Henry IV. 
With his great minister Colbert, he introduced order and 



§260] THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 283 

economy into the finances, encouraged new manufactures, and, 
with ardent zeal, watched over the welfare of the New France 
growing up in America (§ 282). But in 1667 Louis turned to 
a career of foreign aggression, and a series of wars filled the 
remaining forty years of his life. 

259. First Period of Wars, 1667-1678. — Louis had married the 
daughter of Philip IV of Spain, but had expressly renounced any future 
claim upon the Spanish throne. On Philip's death, however, Louis 
claimed the Spanish Netherlands for his wife, and marched into the Prov- 
inces with overwhelming force. The neighboring Dutch Republic saw its 
own danger, and resisted his progress. Through its efforts the Triple 
Alliance against Louis was formed between Holland, Sweden, and Eng- 
land. Louis yielded, keeping only a line of Netherland fortresses ; but 
he yielded in order better to prepare to crush presumptuous Holland. 
Sweden and England he detached from the Alliance. Then he turned to 
attack the little Dutch Republic. His rapid successes alarmed the Dutch, 
and, by an internal revolution, they called to power William of Orange,'^ 
the great-grandson of William the Silent. William was not a supreme 
genius like that ancestor, but he was able, faithful, heroic, and more 
than any other man he foiled the French designs through the years to 
come. When it was urged upon him that conflict with France was hope- 
less, and that he would only see his country lost, he replied quietly, 
"There is one way never to see it lost, — and that is to die on the last 
dyke." With such grim determination, he finally cut the dykes, and the 
waves of the North Sea drove out the French army. Meantime he toiled 
ceaselessly in building up against France the Grand Alliance, comprising 
Spain, Austria, and Brandenburg. Louis was forced to accept peace, keep- 
ing, however, Franche Comt6 (which had been a detached Spanish prov- 
ince) and a strip more of the Spanish Netherlands. 

260. *' Reunions.*' Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. — These 
wars had lasted twelve years. During the next ten years of 
peace two significant movements occurred. 

a. TJie '^Reunions." A French court of inquiry, set up by 
Louis, declared that about a hundred little bits of territory 
along the Rhine frontier belonged to France, because of some 
previous connection with the realms recently acquired; and 
on this flimsy pretext Louis seized them, one after another. 

1 Ten years alter this war, lie became AVilliara III of England (§ 250) . 



284 SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. [§ 261 

The most important territory so gained was the great city of 
Strashurg. 

b. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Louis was an ardent 
Catholic and hated heresy. In 1685 he decided to revoke the 
Edict of Nantes and to compel the Huguenots to accept Cathol- 
icism. Bodies of dragoons were quartered in the Huguenot 
districts, and terrible persecutions followed. Protestantism 
did disappear from Prench soil; but, despite the prohibition 
against emigration, the Protestants themselves by tens of thou- 
sands (perhaps three hundred thousand in all) escaped to Eng-j 
land, Prussia, Holland, and America. 

The effect upon France corresponded in a measure to the 
effect upon Spain from the expulsion of the Moriscoes. The 
Huguenots had been the most enterprising merchants and 
the most skillful artisans of France, and their flight dealt a 
crushing blow to the prosperity of that country, — coming, too, 
as it did, just when France was exhausted by wars. The 
remainder of Louis' reign was to be a period of failure and 
humiliation, and of preparation for the French Revolution a 
century later. 

261. Second Series of Wars, 1689-1713. — The accession of Louis' en- 
emy, William of Orange, to the throne of England (§ 250) was the signal 
for a new war. This time Louis meant to secure the Palatinate, a Ger- 
man province on the Rhine. As before, the French armies were victori- 
ous in the field ; but, as before too, William checked Louis by a general 
European alliance. France gained no territory, and indeed surrendered 
some of the "reunions" of the preceding period. This war is known in 
American history as "King William's War." It was the beginning of 
a new Hundred Years' War (1689-1815) between France and England, 
for world-empire, — though it cannot be said that either country was 
conscious at first of the importance of the struggle outside Europe. 

Louis hoped to make good his disappointment by arranging a partition 
of Spain. Charles II, the last Spanish Hapsburg, was dying. The crown 
would go naturally either to the Austrian Hapsburgs or to the children 
of Louis XIV, who were nephews of Charles. This time Louis seemed 
to prefer negotiation to war, and he arranged a partition treaty with 
William of Orange, in accordance with which the Spanish realms were to 
be divided among the Powers of Europe. But the proud Spanish people, 



§262] THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 285 

who had not been consulted, had no mind for such an assassination of 
their empire. They preferred instead the accession of Louis' younger 
grandson, as Philip V ; and Cliarles II so arranged in his will. When this 
became known, on the death of Charles in 1700, Louis abandoned the 
partition plan and snatched at the whole prize. Said he exultantly, " The 
Pyrenees no longer exist." Then Europe united against France and 
Spain in the "War of the Spanish Succession," — known in American 
history as "Queen Anne's War." In this struggle, for the first time, 
success in the field lay with the Allies. The English Marlborough and 
the Hapsburg Prince Eugene were two of the greatest generals of history, 
and they won splendid victories over the hitherto invincible armies of 
France, at Blenheim, Bamillies, Oudeiiarde, and Malplaquet. 

The allies were supporting an Austrian Hapsburg for the Spanish 
throne ; but unexpectedly this prince became Emperor Charles VI. After 
that event, to make him also King of Spain would have been to return to 
the days of Charles V, with the world-wide dominions of the Hapsburgs 
reunited. Accordingly, England and Holland withdrew from the alliance, 
and the Peace of Utrecht (1713) left Philip V King of Spain (with a re- 
nunciation of any claim upon the French throne). France had gained 
no territory in Europe, and in America she had lost Newfoundland and 
Nova Scotia to England. England also had acquired command of the 
Mediterranean, by securing from Spain the fortress of Gibraltar and the 
island of Minorca. Spain lost all her European possessions outside her 
own peninsula. To Austria fell the Netherlands, Milan, Naples, and 
Sicily. 1 To the Duke of Savoy fell Sardinia, with the title of a kingdom 
for his enlarged state. 

262. Change in Austrian Policy. — Austria still furnished the emperor 
of the " Holy Roman Empire " at each election, but her rulers were turn- 
ing their attention more and more away from the Rhine and toward the 
Danube. For almost three centuries, Austria had been one of the chief 
bulwarks of Christendom against the Turk, In 1683, Vienna had stood 
its last great siege at a critical moment, and had been relieved by a 
Polish army. Thereafter, Austria assumed the offensive, won back Hun- 
gary, and gradually extended her dominions down the Danube valley 
and the Illyrian coast. In the later part of the age of Louis XIV, the 

1 These arraiigements as to Sicily and Sardinia were not completed at the 
Peace of Utrecht, but were partly arranged afterward between Savoy and 
Austria. The union of Savoy and Sardinia marks the beginning of the 
growth of the kingdom which a century and a half later was to consolidate 
Italy. Shortly before, in 1701 (§ 273) , Brandenburg in North Germany had 
become the kingdom of Prussia ; and this state, a century and a half later, 
was to consolidate Germany, 



286 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 263 

significance of this policy lay in the diversion of Austria's attention from 
the great European wars. Austria's general, Prince Eugene, won most 
of his famcnis victories over the Turks, not over the French. A century 
later, just before the French Revolution, Russia was to replace Austria 
as the chief enemy of the Turk, and to begin to acquire Turkish territory 
along the Black Sea, toward the Danube, Thus, as Turkey declined, 
Russia and Austria were to become rivals for the inheritance. 

263. The Decline of Holland. — The Danubian policy of Austria had 
helped to give Louis XIV a free hand on the Rhine, and one of the re- 
sults was the decline of Holland. In 1640, Dutch vessels carried the 
greater part of the commerce of the world. England, under the Common- 
wealth (1651 and 1652), had attacked Holland's carrying trade, first by 
" Navigation Acts " i and then by open war ; and, after the Restoration in 
England, the government of Charles II on the whole had continued this 
policy. But finally Holland was driven by fear of French conquest to 
ally herself to her commercial rival, and after 1689, she followed the lead 
of England in politics, while that country drew to herself the old Dutch 
supremacy in commerce. 

264. Estimate of Louis XIV. — Louis XIV dazzled the men 
of his age, and won the title of the Great King {Grand Mo- 
narque) ; but we can now see that his aims were mistaken, 
even from a purely selfish view, and that his failure was pro- 
found. From the time of Francis I to the time of Eichelieu, 
France had been in real danger of being crushed in the hostile 
embrace of the Hapsburgs, whose realms encircled her. But 
after 1648, that danger had passed away; and Louis' wars 
against the Hapsburgs lacked whatever excuse had belonged 
to the policy of his predecessors. They, to some degree, fought 
for security ; Louis fought only to enlarge his borders. 

In this aim he was partially successful; but his wars ex- 
hausted France and left the nation burdened with debt through 
the next century. At the close of his reign, the industry of 
France was declining, under a crushing taxation of which 
more than half Avent merely to pay the interest on the debt he 

1 The Navigation Acts required all ships carrying goods between English 
colonies and English ports to be built and owned by Englishmen, — citizens of 
England or of the colonies. These Acts injured Holland and built up the 
New England merchant-marine and shipbuilding industries. 



§265] 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 



287 



had created. Moreover, in liis unjust attacks upon petty prop- 
erties of his neighbors in Europe, he had wasted strengtla and 
opportunities that might have intrenched France as mistress 
in Asia and America (§§ 282, 284). 

265. French Intellectual Leadership. — The Treaty of Utrecht 
marks the exhaustion of France and her decline from politi- 
cal leadership. But French 
intellectual supremacy sur- 
vived through the next cen- 
tury. The court of Louis 
XIV remained the model 
on which every court in 
Europe sought to form itself. 
French thought, French fash- 
ions, the French language, 
spread over Europe and be- 
came the common property of 
all polite society. 

This admiration for France 
was due partly to the out- 
burst of French poetry at this 
time. It was the first great 
age in French literature. 
The leading authors were the 
dramatists, Corneille, Racine, 
and Moliere.^ At the same 

time, this literature was brilliant and sparkling, rather than 
great. Says George Burton Adams {French Nation, 230, 231) : — 

It was distinctly an age of quantity and finish in literature, rather 
than of quality. . . . The work is not constructive, but imitative. It is 
not free and strong, but careful and studied. It is, as it has been called, 
the most literary of literatures. Its theme is . . . the somewhat artificial 
man of society. 

1 A striking illustration of the influence of French literature is that a great 
English school of writers modeled themselves upon it. This is the hody of 
'correct poets," of whom Pope perhaps is the most famous member. 




Louis XIV. 



288 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



[§266 



III. THE RISE OF RUSSIA. 

266. Russia as Peter the Great found Her. — As a " Great 
Power," Russia is the creation of Peter the Great. This unique 
ruler became master of Russia in 1689, at the age of seventeen. 

The Russians belonged to 
the Greek church, but they 
had no other tie with Eu- 
ropean life. In manners 
and thought they were 
Asiatic. They were Asiatic 
also in geographical rela- 
tions. They held a vast 
area — the great eastern 
plain of Europe, reaching 
over into Siberia — but they 
had no seacoast except on 
the Arctic. Practically, 
Russia was an inland state, 
shut off from contact with 
Western Europe by hostile 
Sweden, Poland, and Tur- 
key. 

267. Peter's Character and 
Aims. — Peter was a bar- 
baric genius of tremendous 
energy, clear intellect, and ruthless will. He admired the 
material results of western civilization, and he determined to 
Europeanize his people. As steps toward this, he meant to get 
the Baltic coast from Sweden and the Black Sea from the 
Turks, so as to have "windows to look out upon Europe." 

After two campaigns against the Turks, the young Tsar 
decided to learn more about the western world he had admired 
at a distance. In Holland he studied shipbuilding, as a work- 
man in the navy yards. He visited most of the countries of 
the West, impressing all who met him with his insatiable 




Church of St. Basil, Moscow; built 
about 1575, in tlie reign of Ivan the 
Terrible (§170). The building was 
painted brilliantly, in all the colors 
of the rainbow. 



§269] 



THE EISE OF RUSSIA. 



289 



voracity for information. He inspected cutleries, museums, 
manufactories, arsenals, departments of government, military 
organizations. He collected instruments and models, and 
gathered naval and military stores. He engaged choice artists, 
gold beaters, architects, workmen, officers, and engineers, to 
return w^ith him to Russia, 
with promises, not well kept, 
of great pay. 

268. Russia veneered vs^ith 
European Culture. — With 
these workmen Peter sought 
to introduce western civiliza- 
tion into Russia. The man- 
ners of his people he reformed 
by edict. He himself cut off 
the Asiatic beards of his cour- 
tiers and clipped the bottoms 
of their long robes. Women 
were ordered to put aside 
their veils and to come out 
of their Oriental seclusion. 
It has been well said that 
Peter " tried to Europeanize 
by Asiatic methods." He 
"civilized by the cudgel." 
The upper classes did take on a European veneer. The 
masses remained Russian and Oriental. The gap has never 
closed. 

269. Growth of Russian Territory under Peter and Catherine II. 
— Peter also started Russia on her march toward the European 
seas. On the south, he himself made no permanent advance, 
despite a series of wars with Turkey ; but he bequeathed his 
policy to his successors, and, ever since his day, Constantinople 
has been the goal of Russian ambition in this direction. The 
Baltic " window " Peter himself secured, by victory over Charles 
XII of Sweden, " the Glorious Madman of the North." Sweden 




Peter the Great; after a portrait 
by Kueller. 



290 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 269 

was a tliinly populated country with no great natural resources. 
For a century, a line of great kings and the disciplined bravery 
of her soldiery had made her a leading power in Europe ; but 
such leadership could hardly be permanent. Sweden had grown 
at the expense of Russia, Poland, Denmark, and Brandenburg- 
Prussia; and when Charles XII came to the Swedish throne 
(1697) as a mere boy of fifteen, these states leagued against 
him. 

Charles proved a military genius, and for a long time seemed 
victorious against this overwhelming coalition. But he wore 
out his resources in winning victories that did not destroy his 
huge antagonists, and he was as incapable a riiler as he was 
great in battle. Early in the struggle he defeated Peter the 
Great at Narva, with an army not more than an eighth as 
large as the Russian force ; but while Charles was busied in 
Poland and Germany, Russia recovered herself, and in 1709 
Peter crushed Charles at Pultava. As Peter had foreseen, the 
Swedes had taught him how to beat them. Sweden never 
recovered her military supremacy. Russia secured the Swed- 
ish provinces on the east coast of the Baltic as far north as 
the Gulf of Finland. These districts had been colonized, 
three centuries before, by the Teutonic Knights (§§ 95, 99), 
and German civilization was strongly implanted there. Thus 
the acquisition not only gave Russia a door into Europe, but 
actually brought part of Europe inside Russia. It was in this 
new territory that Peter founded St. Petersburg.^ 

The next important acquisition of territory was under the Empress 
Elizabeth,'^ who seized the southern half of Finland from helpless Sweden. 
Toward the close of the century, under Catherine II, Russia made great 
progress along the coast of the Black Sea. Under the same ruler occurred 
the partition of Poland (§ 278) and the acquisition by Russia of the east- 
ern part of that kingdom, along with the rest of the southeastern Baltic 
shore. These last changes, however, can be understood only in connection 
with the rise of Prussia (§§ 270 ff.). 

1 Special report : anecdotes of the founding of St. Petersburg. 

2 Daughter of Peter ; Empress from 1741 to 1762. 



§273] THE RISE OF PRUSSIA. 291 

IV. THE RISE OF PRUSSIA. 
A. EisE OF Pkussia, to the Age of Frederick the Great. 

270. Growth of a Mark into an Electorate. — Brandenburg was 
one of the " marks " established in the tenth century as bul- 
warks against the Slavs (§ 50). This mark was -the germ of 
modern Prussia. Under a great race of fighting Margraves it 
grew from century to century, and during the Hohenstaufen 
period, its ruler became one of the Electors of the Empire. 

271. Accession of the Hohenzollerns. — In 1415, the line 
of Brandenburg Electors ran out, and Frederick of Hohen- 
zollern, a petty count in . the Alps (like the Hapsburgs a cen- 
tury and a half before), bought Brandenburg from the Emperor. 
The new family was to play a part in North Germany compar- 
able to that of the Hapsburgs in the South. Next to Saxony, 
Brandenburg was the most important of the German Protes- 
tant states in the wars of the Reformation. 

272. New Territory : Cleves and Prussia. — Shortly after 1600 
came the next important acquisition of territory. By family 
inheritance, the Elector of Brandenburg fell heir to two con- 
siderable principalities, — the duchy of Cleves on the extreme 
west of Germany, and the duchy of Prussia outside the Empire 
on the extreme east.^ Thereafter the Hohenzollern Electors 
ruled three widely separated provinces, — on the Rhine, the 
Elbe, and the Vistula. The object of their politics was to 
unite these regions, by securing intermediate lands. To do this 
an army was necessary ; and the army of the little Prussian 
state was soon among the largest and best in Europe. 

273. The "Great Elector" and the First King of Prussia. — 
Toward the close of the Thirty Years' War, Frederick William, 
the " Great Elector," came to the throne of Brandenburg. He 

^ Prussia was the name given to a district which the Teutonic Knights had 
conquered in the fourteenth century from the heathen Slavs, and which had 
beenpartly colonized hy Germans. In the fifteenth century, Poland had seized 
West Prussia. East Prussia afterward became a duchy in the hands of a 
branch of the Hohenzollern family, and in 1618 it passed to the Elector of 
Brandenburg, 



292 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§274 

at once took a leading part in the struggle ; and, as his reward, 
at the Peace of Westphalia he secured eastern Pomerania. 
This brought Brandenburg to the sea. The chief services of 
the long reign of the Great Elector, however, were rendered 
not in war but in peace. He built roads and canals, drained 
marshes, encouraged agriculture, and welcomed the Huguenot 
fugitives from France after the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes (§ 260). 

Frederick, son and successor of the Great Elector, in return 
for aid against Louis XIV, secured the Emperor's consent to 
his changing the title "Elector of Brandenburg" for the more 
stately one of " King in Prussia " (1701) ; and Prussia soon 
came to be the name used for all the Hohenzollern dominions. 

B. Frederick the Great iisr Europe; and England in 
THE New AVorlds. 

274. Wars of the Austrian Succession. — The second king of 
Prussia, Frederick William I, was a rude "drill sergeant," 
memorable only as the stupid father of Frederick the Great ^ 
and as the builder of the magnificent army which his son was 
to use so magnificently. Frederick II (the Great), ascended 
the Prussian throne in 1740. In the same year the Hapsburg 
Emperor, Charles VI, died without a male heir, and Frederick 
began his long reign by an unjust but profitable war. 

By long negotiations Charles had secured the approval of all the Euro- 
pean governments to the Pragmatic Sanction^ — a royal decree whereby 
he appointed his daughter, Maria Theresa, his successor in the heredi- 
tary realms of the Hapsburg family. Frederick, however, disregarded 
Prussia's pledge, and unscrupulously took advantage of the supposed 
weakness of the new Archduchess of Austria. With his perfectly prepared 
army, he seized Silesia, an Austrian province upon which Prussia had 
some shadowy claim. This high-handed act was the signal for a general 
onslaught to divide the Austrian realms. Spain, France, Savoy, Bavaria, 
each hurried to snatch some morsel of the booty. But Maria Theresa 
displayed great courage and ability ; her subjects, especially the gallant 

1 Special reports : anecdotes of Frederick's youth and of his father's court. 



§275] 



FREDERICK THE GREAT. 



293 



Hungarian nobles, rallied loyally to her support ; and the wolves found 
the expected carcass very much alive. A little later, England and Holland 
added their strength to the Austrian side. 

This War of the Austrian Succession was closed in 1748 by the Peace 
of Aixla Ghapelle. Maria Theresa's husband, Francis of Lorraine, had 
been elected Emperor, and the Archduchess herself was now acknowl- 
edged as ruler of Austria. Frederick II kept Silesia, but Austria lost no 
other territory. Frederick 
had shown himself the great- 
est general of the age ; he had 
added a large territory to his 
kingdom, which now reached 
down into the heart of Ger- 
many ; and he had made 
Prussia the one great rival of 
Austria in Germany. 

275. The Contest out- 
side Europe. — Much more 
important, though less 
striking, was the contest 
outside Europe. Eng- 
land and Spain had al- 
ready begun a colonial 
war in 1739, before Fred- 
erick started the general European war; and France in any 
case would soon have joined Spain. France, however, gave her 
energies chiefly to the European struggle, while England's 
activity was spent to a great degree in America. When the 
war began, the French had the advantage of position in 
America, holding the mouths of the St. Lawrence and the 
Mississippi, with the connecting water-ways ; while the Eng- 
lish colonists were stretched along a narrow fringe of coast in 
scattered patches, shut off from the interior by the Appalachians. 
The English Americans were more numerous, however, than the 
French ; and the most important event of the war in America 
was the capture of the French fortress of Louisburg by a New 
England expedition. In India, the French leader, Dupleix, saw 
the chance to secure an Asiatic empire for his country, and. 




Frederick the Great; after an engrav- 
ing from a painting by Ramberg. 



294 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§276 

though greatly thwarted by home indifference and jealousy, he 
did capture the English stations in that country. 

The treaty of peace restored matters to their former position, 
both in America and Asia, but the war marks the growth of a 
consciousness in England and France that the two countries 
were rivals for vast realms outside Europe. The tremendous 
significance of the struggle they did not yet realize. Of 
course we can see now that whether Prussia or Austria 
were to possess Silesia, whether France or Austria were to 
hold the Netherlands, were questions wholly insignificant in 
comparison with the mightier question as to what race and 
what political ideas should hold the ISTew Worlds.^ 

276. The "Seven Years' War" in Europe. — The War of 1740-1748 
had resulted from Frederick's greedy attack upon Austria. In 1756, 
Austria began a war of revenge. Maria Theresa had secured the alliance 
ofvRussia, Sweden, and even of her old enemy France. Four great armies 
invaded Prussia from different directions, and Frederick's throne seemed 
to totter. His swift action and his supreme military genius saved his 
country," in the victories of Bossbqch and Leuthen. The next year Eng- 
land entered the struggle as his ally. England and France had remained 
practically at war in America and India through the brief interval between 
the two European wars ; ^ and now that France had changed to Austria's 
side, England had no choice but to support Prussia. 

277. Victory of England in America and Asia. — In America 
the Seven Years' War is known as the " Great French War," 
or the " French and Indian War." The struggle was literally 
world-wide. Red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes 
of North America, and black men fought in Senegal in Africa; 
while Frenchmen and Englishmen grappled in India as well 
as in Germany, and their fleets engaged on every sea. The 
most tremendous and showy battles took- place in Germany ; 



1 The American English felt bitterly chagrined at the return of Louisburg 
to the French ; but it was much more important for the British Empire to 
regain its hold upon India than to keep one French fortress in America. 

2 Braddock's campaign in America (1754) took place during this interval, 
before any formal declaration of war between France and England. 



§277] FREDERICK THE GREAT. 29S 

and, thougL. the real importance of the struggle lay outside 
Europe, still the European conflict in the main decided the 
wider results. William Pitt, the English minister, who was 
working to build up a great British empire, declared that in 
Germany he would conquer America from France. He did so. 
England furnished the funds and her navy swept the seas. 
Frederick and Prussia, supported by English subsidies, fur- 
nished the troops and the generalship for the European 
battles. The striking figures of the struggle are (1) Pitt, the 
great English imperialist, the directing genius of the war; 
(2) Frederick of Prussia, the military genius, who won Pitt's 
victories in Germany ; (3) Wolfe, who won French America 
from the great Montcalm ; and (4) Clive in India. 

The story of the struggle in America is too familiar to need repetition. 
The story of the conquest of India calls for a brief outline. Dupleix had 
been recalled by the shortsighted French government, and no Efench 
commander was left in India able to cope with the English leaders. Clive 
was an unknown English clerk at Madras. The Nabob of Bengal 
treacherously seized the English post at Calcutta, induced the garrison to 
surrender on the promise of good treatment, and then suffocated them 
horribly by packing the one hundred and forty-six Europeans in a close 
dungeon i through the hot tropical night. The young Clive was moved to 
vengeance. He organized a small expedition of a thousand Englishmen 
and two thousand faithful native troops, and at Plassey (1757) he over- 
threw the Nabob's Oriental army of sixty thousand men. Soon after, 
English supremacy was thoroughly established. 

The treaty of peace left Europe without change. In India, 
the French retained only a few unfortified trading posts. In 
America, England received Florida from Spain, and Canada 
and the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley from France. 
France ceded to Spain the western half of the Mississippi 
Valley, in compensation for the losses Spain had incurred as 
her ally, and, except for her West Indian islands, she herself 
ceased to be an American power. 

1 This was the Black Hole of Calcutta, famous in literature. 



296 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§278 

278. The Partitions of Poland. — The anarchy of Poland gave its 
growing neighbors excuse to plunder it. The population consisted of about 
twelve million degraded serfs,'and one hundred thousand selfish, oligarchic 
nobles. The latter constituted the government. They met in occasional 
Diets, and, when the throne became vacant, they elected the figure-head 
king. Unanimous consent was required for any vote in the Diet, — each 
noble possessing the right of veto. Under such conditions, the other 
Powers of Europe had begun to play with Poland at wUl. Catherine II 
of Kussia determined to seize a large part of the country. Frederick II 
persuaded Austria to join him in compelling Catherine to share the booty. 
The "First Partition" in 1772, pared off a rind about the heart. The 
Second and Third Partitions, which completed the work and "assassi- 
nated the kingdom," had not even the pretext of misgovernment in 
Poland. The Poles had undertaken sweeping reforms; but Catherine 
did not mean that her prey should so escape, and a Russian army sud- 
denly crossed the border (1793). Frederick II was dead and the new 
king of Prussia had approved the reformed Polish constitution ; but now 
he sent his army to join the Russians. Austria was busied with a war 
against the French Revolutionists (§ 331), and so the Second Partition 
enlarged only the two other robbers. The Poles made an heroic defense, 
under their hero-leader Kosciusko, but this only led to the Third Partition, 
in which Austria again had a share. This partition wiped Poland off the 
map (1795). 

Russia had gained far the greatest part of the territory, and she now 
bordered Germany on the east, as France did on the west. Plainly the 
true policy of the Germans, early and late, would have been the honest 
one of supporting the "buffer states" — Poland and Charles the Bold's 
Burgundy — against the greed of Russia and France. Failure to do so 
has left Germany exposed to immediate attack by powerful enemies and 
has compelled her to build up artificial frontiers of fortresses and bayonets. 

279. The True Greatness of Frederick. — Frederick II had 
shown himself unscrupulous in diplomacy and a genius in war; 
but there was another side to his life, which, more properly 
than either war or diplomacy, earns him his title of "the 
Great." Most of his forty-six years' reigii was passed in peace, 
and he proved a father to his people. All the beneficent work 
of the Great Elector (§ 273) was taken up and carried forward 
vigorously. Prussia was transformed. Wealth and comfort 
increased by great leaps. The condition of the peasantry was 
improved, and the administration in all its branches was made 




297 



298 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§ 280 

economical and efficient. Frederick was also an author and 
a patron of literature ; and he is a type of the " crowned phi- 
losophers," or " beneficent despots," who sat upon the thrones 
of Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century, just 
before the French Revolution. Under the influence of a new 
enlightened sentiment, created by a remarkable school of 
French writers (§ 302), government underwent a marvelous 
change. It was just as aristocratic as before, — no more by 
the people than before, — but despots did try to govern for the 
people, not for themselves. Sovereigns began to speak of 
themselves, not as privileged proprietors, but, in Frederick's 
phrase, as " the first servants of their states." ^ 

280. The " Benevolent Despots." — Frederick of Prussia, Cath- 
erine of Eussia, Charles III of Spain, Leopold of Tuscany, 
Ferdinand of Naples, Joseph II of Austria, all belonged to the 
class of philosophic, liberal-minded, "benevolent despots" of 
this age. In Sweden and Portugal, two great ministers sought 
to impose a like policy upon the kings. All these rulers 
planned far-reaching reforms, — amelioration or abolition of 
serfdom, the building up of public education, and reform of 
the church. Frederick's genius and tireless energy accom- 
plished something for a time ; but on the whole the monarchs 
made lamentable failures. One man proved powerless to lift 
the inert weight of a nation. The clergy and nobles, jealous 
for their privileges, opposed and thwarted the royal will. 
Except in England and France, there was no large middle 
class to supply friendly officials and sympathy. The most 
remarkable, and in some ways the greatest, of these philo- 
sophic despots, was Joseph II of Austria, the son of Maria 
Theresa; and he died disheartened, dictating for himself the 
epitaph, " Here lies a king who designed many benefits for 
his people, but who was unable to accomplish any of them," ^ 

1 Even Frederick's worst wars were designed to benefit Prussia. 

2 The kings had failed to bring about sufiflcieut reform ; and now, in France, 
the people were to try for themselves (§§ 285 ff.)- Before entering upon that 
story, we will sum up one more phase of the eighteenth century (§§ 281-284). 



§282] THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 299 

V. THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 

281. Expansion of England, to the Opening of the Struggle 
with France. — In the reign of Elizabeth, England meant a 
state of fifty-eight thousand square miles, — about the size 
of Georgia. It did not include Scotland nor all of Ireland. 
The population was about four millions. The decisive steps 
in the great change into the vast empire of to-day belong to 
the eighteenth century, and much of the real progress was to 
take place in the nineteenth century ; but some earlier begin- 
nings call for notice. 

a. The first Stuart king, James I (1603), joined Scotland 
and England under one crown. A little more than a century 
later, under Anne, the last Stuart sovereign, this "personal 
union" (§ 243, note) was made a real consolidation (1707). 
By the parliamentary '-Act of Union," assented to by Scot- 
land, the northern state gave up her separate legislature, re- 
ceived representation in the English Parliament, and became 
a part of the " United Kingdom." 

b. Between the first and last Stuart reigns, Ireland was 
made English by conquest and colonization; and, during the 
Commonwealth, by sweeping acts of confiscation, English 
landlords were put in possession of the soil, so that the Irish 
peasantry became outcasts in their own land. No other part 
of England's empire was so unjustly acquired, and no other 
part has given her so much trouble. 

c. During the Stuart period, too, the English colonies in 
America were founded. That story needs no telling here. 

282. The French Colonial System. — When English expansion 
began, France had already begun to build up her colonial 
empire in Canada ; and a little later, in the time of Louis XIV, 
La Salle secured the mouth of the Mississippi. 

But the French colonies were petted and over-governed. 
They were hampered by well-meant but foolish restrictions 
and encouragements. Every new enterprise was fostered by 
aid from the government at home, — and fell into hopeless 



300 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§283 

languor when the support was withdrawn. Moreover, no 
shadow of political life was permitted. The governors were 
sent out from France, and there was no sign of a colonial 
legislature or of popular county and town governments, all of 
which were found in the English colonies. The rulers did 
everything; the people did nothing. 

The rulers were oftentimes f arsighted, noble men ; but the 
system was fundamentally weak, when compared with that 
of the English colonies growing up in neglect along the At- 
lantic coast. The French were better woodsmen and Indian 
fighters, man for man, than the English colonists ; but they 
could not build a state ; and when England had once conquered 
them, they submitted easily, — as the English colonists would 
never have done under French despotism. Louis XIV lost his 
last real chance for American empire when he refused to let 
the Huguenots settle in French America. They would have 
come in numbers, with families, and would have made farmers 
and artisans. The French who did come did not bring wives, 
and turned eagerly to hunting and fur-trading, rather than to 
agriculture. Thus, despite their early start and their better 
location and the much larger population at home, the French 
colonists did not grow in numbers as fast as did the English. 
In 1754, when the decisive struggle began, with Braddock's 
campaign, France had only about a fortieth as many colonists 
in America as England had, though her home population was 
four times as large as England's. 

283. The Second " Hundred Years' War." — At the end of the 
seventeenth century began the long contest for empire between 
France and England. This struggle lasted with brief intervals 
for a hundred and twenty-six years, from 1689 to Waterloo 
in 1815. It falls into three chapters, 1689-1763, 1775-1783, 
and 1792-1815. The story of the first struggle has been told 
in outline in §§ 261, 275-279, in connection with the story 
of European wars. At the expiration of the period, England 
had dispossessed France in America and in Asia ; Spain still 
held South America and half North America, but her power 



§284] TPIE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 301 

was evidently decaying, day by day ; and Holland, too, with 
wide-spread colonial empire, was plainly in decline. England 
stood forth as the leading world-power. 

This result was to be intensified by the third period of the 
struggle, whose story will be told in connection with the Wars 
of the Revolution and of Napoleon. The second period, that 
of the American Eevolution, needs only brief reference (§ 284). 

284. The American Revolution. — At the time, France and 
Spain saw in the American Eevolution a chance to revenge 
themselves upon England by helping the best part of her 
empire to break away. To-day we see more justly that its 
real importance, even to Europe, lay in the establishment of 
an independent American nation and in teaching England to 
improve her system of colonial government. Erom the 
strictly American point of view, the war came because the 
English government unwisely insisted upon managing Ameri- 
can affairs after the Americans were quite able to take care 
of themselves. England came out of the war with gains as 
well as losses, and with glory little tarnished. She had been 
fighting, not America alone, but France, Spain, Holland, and 
America. 

Theodore Roosevelt has put finely the result and character of this wider 
struggle (Gouverneur Morris, 116) : "England, hemmed in by the ring 
of her foes, fronted them with a grand courage. In her veins the Ber- 
serker blood was up, and she hailed each new enemy with grim delight, 
exerting to the full her warlike strength. Single-handed, she kept them 
all at bay, and repaid with crippling blows, the injuries they had done 
her. In America, alone, the tide ran too strong to be turned. But Hol- 
land was stripped of all her colonies ; in the East, Sir Eyre Coote beat 
down Hyder All, and taught Moslem and Hindoo alike that they could 
not shake off the grasp of the iron hands that held India ; Rodney won 
back for his country the supremacy of the ocean in that great sea-fight 
where he shattered the splendid French navy ; and the long siege of Gib- 
raltar was closed with the crushing overthrow of the assailants. So, with 
bloody honor, England ended the most disastrous war she had ever waged." 

The secession of the American colonies did not injure England, 
as her friends and foes had expected it to do. The commerce 



302 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [§284 

of the United States continued to be carried on mainly through 
England, and, very soon, the new nation, with its growing 
wealth, was buying more English goods than the old colonies 
had been able to pay for. For her territorial loss, England 
found compensation, too, to some degree, in the acquisition of 
Australia. 

Further Reading upon the subject of this chapter may profitably 
be confined to the expansion of Europe into the New Worlds. On this 
topic the best brief treatments are Woodward's Expansion of the British 
Empire (pp. 1-263) and Seeley's JSaipansiow of England. Seeley's Groivth 
of British Policy is good for advanced students. George Burton Adams' 
essay, "Anglo Saxon Expansion," in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 
1897, is excellent reading. Caldecott's English Colonization and. Empire 
contains an admirable treatment. For the great struggle in America, the 
student should read Parkman's Works, especially his Montcalm and Wolfe 
and his Half Century of Conflict. The following biographies, too, are 
good: Wilson's Clive, Malleson's Dupleix and Lord Clive, and Bradley's 
Wolfe. Mahan's Influence of the Sea Poioer upon History, 1660-17S3, 
should not be omitted by the advanced student. 

For Europe, the best general reference is the volume of the " Periods " 
series, — Wakeman's Europe., 1589-1715. Hassall's iowis X7F is an 
admirable treatment. Henderson's Short History of Germany may be 
used for Germany and for Frederick II. 

REVIEW EXERCISES. 

1. Fact drills. 

a. Dates : add the following with their significance : 1520, 1571, 1588, 
1628-1629, 1648, 1640-1649, 1660, 1688, 1713, 1740, 1763, 1783. 
h. Extend list of terms for drill, 
c. List tioenty important battles between 843 and 1789. 

2. Continue the syllabus (page 190). 

3. Review by countries, with " catch-words," from 843. 

4. Review the introductory chapter of the book, and observe its applica- 

tion to the narrative up to 1789. 

5. Make a brief paragraph statement for the period 1648-1787, to include 

the changes in territory and in the relative power of the different 
European states. 



PAET III. 

THE AGE OF NATION STATES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

Every aristocracy has three ages: it is founded in its age of violence; 
it degenerates into its age of privilege ; and in its age of vanity it is extin- 
guished. — Chateaubriand. 

There are only two events in history^ — the Siege of Troy and the 
French Eevolution. — Disraeli. 

. . . An evidence of vitality ^ not of decay ; the outcome of national con- 
valescence ; the result of a universal conviction of injustice and of a univer- 
sal determination to install justice. — Adapted from Shailer Mathews. 

The nineteenth century is precisely the history of the work the French 
Bevolution did leave. The Bevolution was a creating force even more 
than a destroying one ; it loas an inexhaustible soxirce of fertile influences ; 
it not only cleared the ground of the old society, hut it manifested all the 
elements of the new society. — Frederic Harrison. 

I. FUNDAMENTAL CHAEACTERISTICS. 

285. A True "Revolution." — Italy had given the world an 
intellectual revolution; Germany, a religious revolution; and 
now France was to give the political and social revolution. 
The three movements, — the Renaissance, the Reformation, 
and the French Revolution, — are the most important events 
since the Teutonic invasions. Preeminently, among the so- 
called "revolutions" in history, the French Revolution de- 
serves the name. The English Revolution of 1688 only swept 
away a temporary interference with the old lines of develop- 

303 



304 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§286 

ment in English, politics : it was a " conservative revolution/' 
restoring the nation to an old groove. The like is true, to a 
great degree, of the American Revolution : that great move- 
ment divided the British Empire and made a new nation, but 
it did not itself materially change the character of American 
society or politics ; like the English Revolution, it was a 
protest against new abuses. But the French Revolution over- 
turned and swept away a society and institutions that had 
been growing up for centuries. It cut loose from the past, 
and started France upon new lines of growth. 

286. The Revolution Constructive as well as Destructive. — The 
Revolution was a vast and fruitful reform. The work of 
destruction, with which it began, was accompanied by much 
horror and bloodshed, and often receives undue attention. 
But if the Revolution destroyed the old, it also built up the 
new : and this constructive side is far the more important. 
The Revolution did inflict much terrible agony upon a large 
class, and it took the lives of thousands of individuals, most 
of them, perhaps, innocent and worthy. But the really sig- 
nificant thing is not the temporary mob-rule with its horrors : 
the significant thing is the great national awakening which 
swept away an absurd society, founded by ancient violence 
and warped by time, to replace it with a simpler social system 
based more nearly on equal rights. 

And even as to the destructive side, we must guard against 
prevalent exaggerations. Literature is full of hysterics and 
sentimentality on this matter. It is right that we should 
shudder at the violence and agony : but there is no danger 
that we shall not shudder sufficiently ; for, as Carlyle says, 
those who suffered in the excesses of the Revolution were 
the few who could shriek and so create sympathy for their 
woes. The danger is, that we forget the relief to the dumb 
multitudes, who had been enduring worse tortures for ages, but 
whose inarticulate moanings hardly attract the attention of 
history. Carlyle touches a sad truth when he adds that not 
within ten centuries had there been any equal period with so 



§288] BEFORE THE REVOLUTION— SOCIAL CLASSES. 305 

little suffering, over France as a whole, as just those months 
of bloody revolution. 

287. The Revolution directed against Social Inequality even 
more than against Absolute Government. — The Revolutionists 
were to take for their watchword the famous phrase, Liberty, 
Fraternity, Equality. But in practice they cared for liberty 
not so much in itself as because it was a means toward equal- 
ity. " Fraternity " and " Equality " meant to them much the 
same thing ; and they put the emphasis on this two-thirds of 
the motto. In other words, the Revolution was social even 
more than political} The Revolution came to he a revolt 
against the monarchy, but primarily it was a re'^iolt against 
the unjust privileges of the aristocracy. Had the monarch 
been willing and resolute to reduce those privileges himself, 
his own power probably would not have been attacked. The 
assault upon the monarchy was a means to an end. 

II. CONDITIONS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 

xi. Social Classes. 

288. The Privileged Drones. — In 1789, France had a popula- 
tion of about twenty -five millions. At the top were a quarter 
of a million of nobles and clergy. These were the two privi- 
leged orders. They were about equally divided in numbers 
and wealth. Together they owned half the soil of France, 
with all the fine buildings ; and they took besides from the 
peasant, in church dues and feudal payments, over a fourth of 
his income. Moreover, they received in pensions and sinecure ^ 
salaries a large part of the taxes paid by the nation, while they 
themselves were nearly exempt from taxation. 



1 This is hard for American students to grasp, because in America our 
democracy in politics has grown out of democracy in society. But it is true 
that in France, political democracy was sought chiefly as a means of securing 
social and economic equality. 

2 A sinecure is an office to which no duties are attached. 



306 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 289 

Nor were financial advantages the only privileges of these orders. 
Eor instance, no man in the army could become an ofiicer unless he could 
shovf that his ancestors on both sides had been nobles back to his great- 
great-graudfathers. Other privileges will be noticed in connection with 
the oppression of the peasantry (§§ 293-294). Arthur Young, an English 
gentleman traveling in France just before the Revolution, was indignant 
at the reckless driving of young French nobles in the crowded and narrow 
Paris streets, and declared that if English nobles were to drive so in Lon- 
don they would be soundly thrashed and rolled in the gutter. 

These privileged nobles rendered little service to society. 
They had been useful in earlier times : but the monarchy had 
taken away their political power, giving all administrative 
offices to low-born clerks, and the nobles themselves had abdi- 
cated their other proper functions, as captains of local indus- 
try, by becoming mere courtiers. 

Many of the poorer nobles, it is true, remained upon their 
shrunken estates, because they could not afford life at court : 
but even this class saw their highest ambition in a pension or 
an office which should enable them to exchange their " dull 
banishment " for the gayety of Paris, and so they failed to fill 
the proper place in country life. The wealthy nobles were 
absentee landlords ; and to keep up luxuriant establishments 
in town they drove their bailiffs for money, while the bailiifs 
in turn harassed the cultivators. The nobles of this class had 
for their sole industry to amuse themselves and each other, — 
to dress gracefully, to phrase a jest wittily or a compliment 
acceptably, to win a pension, and to dine sumptuously. They 
had become a burdensome excrescence upon the nation. 

289. Higher and Lower Clergy. — Of the hundred and thirty 
thousand clergy, half were monks and nuns. Of the rest, one 
out of six belonged to the " higher clergy." With insignificant 
exceptions, these were all of noble birth. From their immense 
revenues they paid paltry sums to subordinates, who performed 
for them their spiritual offices, while they themselves lived at 
court in idle luxury or in vice. The bishops and abbots enjoyed 
over five-sixths of the church revenues, while the forty thou- 
sand village priests and the other lower clergy lived on bare 



§290] BEFORE THE REVOLUTION — SOCIAL CLASSES. 307 

pittances. These priests numbered many devoted religious 
men ; but they were of non-noble birth, and high offices were as 
hopelessly barred against the non-noble in the church as in the 
army. In consequence, the opening of the Kevolution found 
the village priests (cures) on the side of the third estate. 

290. The Burdened Workers. — The privileged drones were 
supported by some twenty-three millions of unprivileged and 
overburdened workers, — nearly a hundred to each aristocrat. 
Of these workers, great masses dragged out a haggard existence 
in hideous wretchedness. A century before the Revolution a 
French gentleman wrote, with somewhat cynical sympathy : — 

" Certain wild-looking beings, male and female, are seen in the coun- 
try, — black-livid, sunburned, slaves of the soil, which they dig and grab 
with invincible stubbornness. They seem just capable of speech, and 
when they stand erect, they display the lineaments of men. They are 
men. At night they retire to their dens, where they devour black bread 
with roots and water. They spare other human beings the trouble of sow- 
ing, plowing, and reaping, and thus should not themselves lack bread." 

A hundred years later, on the eve of the Revolution, Arthur 
Young (§ 288) speaks, with less rhetoric but with greater 
earnestness, of the misery of this class. Pitiful is his typical 
story of the peasant woman whom he overtook upon the road and 
whom he supposed to be seventy years old, but who proved to 
be only twenty-seven. Toil, want, and hard fare robbed the 
workers of youth and life. Famine was chronic in the fertile 
land of France in the eighteenth century, as it has been in 
Russia in the nineteenth. Taxation and feudal extortion dis- 
couraged agriculture. A fourth of the land lay waste. Of the 
rest, the tillage was poor, and the yield per acre was a third 
less than in England. If a poor season produced a crop fail- 
ure in a single province, starvation followed, although neigh- 
boring provinces might possess abundance. Poor roads, and 
high tolls, and poverty, and the government's carelessness or 
inefficiency made it impossible for one district to draw relief 
from another. So the records are full of local famines and 
desperate revolts. At other times, when things were not quite 



,-/ 



308 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§291 

SO bad, great numbers of the peasants lived on a coarse bread 
made of bran and bark and acorns, — because of wbicb, says 
an official report, " the children very commonly die." 

The laborers in the towns were little or no better off. They 
were pallid, haggard, diminutive, — " sullen masses of rags and 
misery," — huddled in garrets and cellars. The regulations of 
the gilds shut out the masses of the town population from 
profitable trades and left them no chance to rise. 

At the same time, it must be understood that this dark pic- 
ture was not without relief. The condition of the peasantry 
varied greatly in the different districts ; and in some places 
they lived a merry, prosperous life. In any case, the cause of 
the Revolution did not lie in their misery so much as in the 
progress they had made toward getting out of it (§ 292). To 
some extent, however, the justification of the Revolution does 
lie in that ancient misery.^ 

291. The Bourgeoisie. — Between the two social extremes 
came a small, but important, middle class, composed of 
bankers, lawyers, physicians, men of letters, merchants, and 
shopkeepers. This class is known by the French name of 
bourgeoisie. It was wealthy and proud, and its members pos- 
sessed many economic privileges, which were bitterly griev- 
ous to the masses ; but it was destitute of political power and 
of social privilege. 

The middle class was less numerous than in England, but 
far more numerous and much more important than in Ger- 
many, Italy, or Spain. It was this class who made the Revo- 
lution possible. They began it, and for the first two years, on 
the whole, they controlled it. Then it slipped for a while from 
their hands, and, indeed, was directed against their class, in 
the interests of the masses ; but with one or two exceptions, 
the bourgeoisie continued to furnish the leaders of the move- 
ment to the close. 



1 On the peasantry, see Taine's Ancient Regime, 329-345. For a more 
favorable view, cf. Lowell's Eve of the French Revolution, chs. xiii and xiv. 



§293] BEFORE THE REVOLUTION— FEUDAL BURDENS. 309 

B. Feudal Burdens. 

The misery of the peasant came from (1) the feudal burdens, (2) the 
extortionate taxation by tlie state, and (3) the absence of suitable pro- 
vision for spiritual and intellectual needs. The first two of these factors 
will now be treated more in detaih 

292. Peasant Landowners.^ — Despite the evils mentioned 
above, and others yet to be noted, the French peasantry had 
been slowly improving in condition during the eighteenth cen- 
tury. They were behind the peasantry of England, but far in 
advance of that class in Germany or Spain. They played a part 
in the Revolution because they had already progressed far enough 
to feel the i^ossihility of further progress. A million and a half 
were still serfs, but these were nearly all in Alsace or Lor- 
raine, the regions lately seized from Germany. Elsewhere the 
twenty-two millions or more had become free in person, and 
many of them had become landowners. Perhaps a fourth of 
the soil belonged to the peasants ; but most of it was held in 
lots so small that a family must eke out its existence by labor 
on other land belonging to a neighboring lord. The greater 
part of the peasants lived altogether by cultivating the land 
of great proprietors. 

293. The Land Servile. — Even when the free peasant owned 
land, he owned it subject to many feudal obligations. Sometimes 
the dues were heavy, one or more days' work out of each week ; 
sometimes they were merely trifling and vexatious, perhaps a 
pair of chickens a year. So long as he made the payments, a 
peasant-owner could not be dispossessed. He was subject, 
however, to many incidental burdens. He could not sell his 
land without paying the lord a part of the price. He could not 
sell produce except in the lord's market, and only after the 
lord had had first chance to sell his own ; and then the peas- 
ant paid toll on each sale. The grain that he kept for his 
children he could grind only at the lord's mill, leaving there 

1 Read Tocqueville's France before the Revolution, bk. ii, ch. i. 



310 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 294 

one sixteenth the flour, and he could bake only in the lord's 
oven, leaving one loaf out of a certain number.^ 

294. The Game Laws. — Most grievous of all the feudal 
burdens were the nobles' rights, and sole rights, to hunt. Wild 
animals vs^ere protected by brutal game-laws such as had van- 
ished in England more than four hundred years before. The 
peasant must not under any circumstances injure the rabbits 
or pigeons or deer that devoured his crop ; but the nobles at 
will might ride over the crops to chase the game. The peasant 
might not own a dog, except by special permit ; and if he did, 
he must keep it chained to 9, log. On penalty of death, the 
peasant might not carry a gun, even to kill the wolves. He 
could not fence his land without a special permit, and then he 
must leave wide gaps for the huntsmen's horses. He could 
not even enter his own field, to till it, between certain dates, 
when the pheasants were hatching or the rabbits were young. 
Year after year the crops were trampled by huntsmen or 
devoured by game. In some districts the peasants watched 
all night from May to October, armed with tin pans and kettles 
to make a hullabaloo. Arthur Young tells us how the peasant 
had come to identify the noble with the wild beast : at sight 
of a herd of deer his guide exclaimed, " There go the nobility, 
who devour us." ^ 

C. Taxation.^ 

295. Unequal Distribution. — The irresponsible monarchy 
spent money extravagantly, wastefully, wickedly. The wars 
of Louis XIV left France burdened with a great debt. The 
dissolute, cynical Louis XV spent as much in vice as his 

1 Probably these burdens never all fell upon an.y one free peasant : they 
varied from district to district and from man to man. 

2 See Arthur Young's Travels, 82, 316, 317 (Bohn edition), and Tocqueville's 
Correspondence, I, 102. Striking summaries are given by Taine, Ancient 
Regime, 55-59. When the government broke down, in the summer of 1789 
(§ 317) , the peasantry attacked the game with a v/holesale slaughter and with 
peculiar animosity. Cf. Young, 256. 

8 For a remarkable treatment, see Taine, Ancient R^pime. 34:&-373 and 412. 



§296] BEFORE THE REVOLUTION— TAXATION. 311 

predecessor had spent in war. The royal revemie was mis- 
managed, given away in pensions to unworthy favorites and 
needy nobles, and plundered by corrupt officials. 

The treasury, emptied in these shameful ways, was filled in 
a manner equally shameful. Through devices and favors too 
numerous to mention, the privileged orders practically escaped 
taxation. The most grievous taxes they were free from alto- 
gether, and for the others they assessed themselves and paid a 
ridiculously small part in proportion to their wealth. Large 
numbers of the wealthier bourgeoisie, also, escaped, by purchas- 
ing exemption in the form of sinecure offices connected in 
name with the royal household. Thus payment was made 
only by those too poor to escape and least able to pay. The 
actual amount raised by the monarchy was not greater than 
France could have afforded. The evils were (1) that the reve- 
nue was wasted without any proper benefit to the nation; 
(2) that the wealthy classes did not pay ; and (3) that various 
clumsy devices made the collection needlessly burdensome 
and offensive. 

296. The Direct Taxes. — Of the many direct taxes, perhaps the most 
burdensome were the taille and the corvee. 

a. The taille was originally a tax on the peasant's land ; but over 
much of France it had become an arbitrary seizure of any part of his 
visible income. Each year the government decided how much a given 
district must pay. If a village showed signs of prosperity, its share was 
promptly increased. On one occasion a royal officer wrote, "The peo- 
ple of this village are stouter, and there are chicken feathers before the 
doors ; the taxes here should be greatly increased next year." 

Within the village, what one peasant did not or could not pay, his 
richer or less favored neighbor had to pay. The apportionment in these 
small units was left wholly to the appointed collector. He could favor 
one neighbor, or gratify a petty grudge by ruining another. But for each 
individual, too, in the long run, just as for the community, any evidence 
of well-being meant heavier taxation. So the peasants concealed their 
comforts jealously, if they had any, and by preference left their cottages 
unrepaired. 

h. The corvee was the forced labor upon roads or upon other public 
works. For such purposes, the peasant might be called from his own crop 



312 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§297 

at any time, even at the most critical moment, by the arbitrary order of 
an official. 

It has been estimated that on the average a peasant paid over half his 
income in direct taxes to the government, and that the feudal dues and 
church tithes raised the amount to over four-fifths his income, while, from 
the remaining one- fifth, he had not only to support his family but also to 
pay various indirect taxes (§297).^ 

297. Indirect Taxes : the Gabelle. — The government placed 
a tax upon the sale of a great many articles.^ The most 
famous of these indirect taxes in France was that upon salt. 
This was called the gabelle.^ It raised the price of salt many- 
times its first value. Ko salt could be bought except from the 
government agents, and every household was compelled by law 
to purchase from these agents at least seven pounds a year for 
every inmate over seven years of age. This amount, too,>was 
for the table only. If a pig were to be salted down, the peas- 
ant must buy an additional supply for that purpose, and get a 
certificate that such a purchase had been made. 

This tax was " farmed " to collectors, who paid the govern- 
ment a certain amount down, and then secured what they 
could get above that amount for their own profit. Only one- 
fifth the amount collected reached the treasury, and thousands 
of persons every year were hung or sent to the galleys for try- 
ing to evade the tax. Many other indirect taxes — on candles, 
fuel, grain, and flour — were farmed out in similar fashion. 

Another class of vexatious indirect taxes were the tolls and 
tariffs on goods. These payments were required not only at 
the frontier of France, but again and again, at the border of 

1 Cf. Taine's Ancient Regime, 412, 413. It seems as though these figures 
must contain serious exaggeration, but they are the work of an industrious 
and earnest scholar, and they are usually quoted as conveying the essential 
truth. Perhaps they held good for some districts, and at least they estabhsh 
beyond doubt the fact of terrible general oppression. 

2 Such a tax is usually called an indirect tax, because, directly, it is paid to 
the government by the dealers, and only indirectly by the actual consumers, 
in the added price they pay. 

3 Cf. Arthur Young's Travels, 315, 316 (Bohn edition). The gabelle varied 
in amount in different districts, and somo provinces were wholly free from it. 



§299] BEFORE THE REVOLUTION — GOVERNMENT. 313 

each province and even at the gate of each town, as the goods 
traveled through the country. Workmen who crossed a river 
from their homes in one district to their day's work in another, 
had to pay a tariff on the luncheon in their pockets ; and fish, 
on their way to Paris from the coast, paid thirteen times their 
first cost in such tolls. 

D. The Government.' 

298. The Centralized Machinery. — Directly about the king 
was a Council of State, which formed the center of the admin- 
istration. Subject to the king's approval, it fixed the taxes 
and the levy for the army, drew up edicts, and indeed ruled 
France. Its members were appointed by the king and held 
office only at his pleasure. France was made up of about 
thirty districts, which corresponded roughly to the old feudal 
provinces. At the head of each such province was an Intendant 
appointed by the king, from men of the third estate with 
legal training. Subject to the royal power, the Intendant was 
an unchecked despot, with tremendous power for good or evil. 
In the parish, the local officer — mayor, consul, or syndic — ■ 
was sometimes chosen by the people, sometimes appointed by 
the Intendant, who could remove him at will. The parish 
assembly could not meet without the Intendant's permission ; 
and it could not take any action without the government's 
approval. Had the wind damaged the parish steeple ? The 
parish might petition for permission to repair it, — at their 
own expense, of course. The Intendant would send the peti- 
tion, with his recommendation, to the Council of State at 
Paris, and a reply might be expected in a year or two.^ 

299. Tyranny over Individuals : Letters of the Seal. — A 
special convenience of the government was its practice of con- 

^ A clear and detailed account is given in Wilson's The State, 207-213. 

2 Tocqueville declares {France before the Revolution, 92) that in the musty 
archives he found many cases of this kind where the original sum needed for 
repair would not have exceeded five dollars. 



314 THE FRENCH EE VOLUTION. [§300 

signing individuals, high or low, to prison without trial, merely 
by a letter with the royal seal. Such letters were not only 
used to remove political offenders, down to the man who spoke 
jestingly of the king's mistress, but they were often secured 
also by private individuals of influence to remove rivals, and 
by parents to discipline unruly sons. Usually the imprison- 
ments were for a few months ; but sometimes the wretch was 
virtually forgotten and left to die in prison, perhaps without 
ever learning the cause of his arrest.^ One minister is said to 
have signed one hundred and fifty thousand of these " lettres 
de cachet," besides sending out others, signed in blank, to his 
Intendants. Very properly did Blackstone, the English law 
writer, class France with Turkey as countries where " personal 
liberty " was " wholly at the mercy of the ruler." 

300. Complications from Survivals of Old Local Governments and 
from Class Feeling. — This centralized machinery was likely to be clumsy, 
from the amount of detail it had to attend to. Moreover, it was compli- 
cated by many factors that did not show on the surface. It is important 
to understand that France was still a patchwork of territories which had 
been seized piece by piece by the kings. Each province had its own laws 
and customs, its own privileges and exemptions ; and the Intendant, 
absolute as he was, had to respect these checks. Even the taxes varied 
widely ; and salt, for instance, cost in one province ten or twelve times as 
much as it did in another just alongside. This absence of uniformity was 
a serious obstacle to efficient government. Moreover, tyrannical as the 
monarchy might be toward individuals, it never dared offend the nobles 
as a body, or the church ; and ordinarily it showed respect to multitudes 
of local interests. France was covered with shadows of old local govern- 
ments, which had lost their power for action but which remained power- 
ful to delay and obstruct. Two classes of such survivals need attention, 
— the Provincial Assemblies of certain districts, and the Parlement of 
Paris. 

a. Anciently, each province had had its Assembly of three estates. 
In the thirteenth century, the French kings began to abolish these as- 
semblies ; but several large provinces kept them until the Revolution. 

1 Arthur Young, Travels, 313 (Bohn edition), tells of an Englishman who 
had been kept in a French prison thirty years, although not even the gov- 
ernment held a record of the reason. 



§301] BEFORE THE REVOLUTION — GOVERNMENT. 315 

These Pays d'Etat (Provinces with Estates), like Brittany, Languedoc, 
and Champagne, were all on the frontier. They had been acquired late, 
and had preserved their ' ' Estates ' ' by treaty. The Provincial Estates 
exercised considerable control over local improvements and local taxation, 
and their mere existence was a checi*: upon royal absolutism. 

b. The Parlement of Paris was a law court, like several others in 
France, but more important than any other. Membership was originally 
purchased from the king, but it had become a property right, and the 
seats were virtually hereditary, though a holder might sell his place. When 
the king issued a new edict, it was not considered in force until it had 
been " registered," or put on record, by this Parlement. This constituted 
a slight check upon the king's power of making laws. The Parlement 
could send back an objectionable edict with a remonstrance (though such 
action was most unusual), and so might possibly secure a reconsideration 
by the monarch. Of course, in such a case, the Parlement would explain 
that it felt sure the king had not meant quite what the words of the edict 
seemed to say ; and of course, too, if the king was in earnest, he had only 
to summon the Parlement before him and in person order it to register. ^ 

Toward the close of the reign of Louis XV, however, the Parlement 
had claimed the right of absolute veto and had refused to register, even 
when so ordered. Whereupon Louis had banished or imprisoned the 
members ; but his successor had brought them back, to play a part in 
setting in motion the coming Revolution (§ 310). 

301. The Government summarized. — Thus the government of 
France was a centralized despotism, anxious to keep the good 
opinion of the privileged classes and hindered in its work by 
the complex survivals of ancient local institutions. To run 
such a machine called for a Napoleon or a Bismarck; but 
hereditary monarchy in the eighteenth century had ceased to 
furnish great rulers.^ Louis XIV had been a tireless worker. 
His successor, the selfish, keen-sighted Louis XV, was wont 
to say, with his mistress, "Let the good machine run itself; 
it will last our time ; after us, the deluge ; " or, as the same 
shameless king said about his coming successor, " I should 
like very much to see how Berry will pull through with it." 

1 This proceeding was known as holding a " bed of justice." Cf . § 129, note. 

2 Jefferson, with some exaggeration, wrote from Paris in 1787 to Monroe 
that there was not a ci"owned head in Europe with abilities to fit its possessor 
to act as a Virginia vestryman. 



316 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



[§302 



Under this " Berry " (Louis XVI), a benevolent idler, of infirm 
will and mediocre talent, the "machine" was to go to pieces 
and the " deluge " was to come. 



E. The Men op Letters.* 

302. Voltaire, Rousseau, and their Fellows. — A revolution, 
it has been said, requires not only abuses but also ideas. The 

combustibles were ready ; 
now came the men. of ideas 
to apply the igniting match. 
About 1750, there began, a 
period of dazzling brilliancy 
in French literature. Never 
before in the history of the 
world had any country seen 
so numerous and so eminent 
a group of men of letters. 
Voltaire, the greatest of the 
illustrious company, had 
already won the fame he 
was to enjoy nearly thirty 
years more ; Diderot and his 
associates began the great 
" Encyclopedia " in 1751 ; 
and two years later appeared 
the first work of Rousseau. 
Beside these men stood 
scores of others only less eminent. Most of the writing, 
except Rousseau's, was critical and destructive. With biting 
satire and keen mockery and powerful logic, these authors 
daringly attacked the superstitions and scandals of the church 
and the absurdities and evils of society. Most of them, it is 
true, confused the corruptions of the church with religion 
itself, and sometimes they are remembered chiefly for their 




Voltaire. 



1 On this topic see Mathews, 52-72, or Mallet, 28^5. 



§303] THE MEN OF LETTERS. 317 

attack upon Christianity ; but of course, " their glory lies not 
in their contempt for things holy but in their scorn for things 
unjust." They railed at absentee bishops of licentious lives ; 
they questioned the privileges of the nobles; and they pitilessly 
exposed the absurdity and iniquity of the gabelle and of the 
'' letters of the seal." Voltaire's powerful plea for religious 
tolerance and his life-long exposure of the folly and wrong of 
religious persecution had much to do with creating the free 
atmosphere in which we live to-day.* 

303. Rousseau and Political Democracy. — Some of these 
authors had learned to admire English liberty and the Eng- 
lish constitutional monarchy ; ^ but most of them, like Voltaire, 
looked rather for reform by some enlightened, philosophic 
despot. One alone of all their number stood for democracy. 
This was Rousseau. He taught much that was absurd, as to 
an ideal " state of nature " " before governments were formed 
by men " ; but he also taught the final and absolute sovereignty 
of the people. His most famous book (T/ie Social Contract, 
1762) opens with the words, " Man was born free, but he is 
now everywhere in chains " ; and the volume argues passion- 
ately man's right and duty to recover freedom. Rousseau's 
moral earnestness and enthusiasm made his doctrine not a 
mere intellectual speculation, but a popular religion. He was 
preeminently the prophet of the political side of the coming 
Revolution.^ 

1 J. R. Lowell says, " We owe half our liberty to that leering old mocker " ; 
and Professor Jowett of Oxford, an English Churchman, declares that Vol- 
taire "did more good than all the Fathers of the Church together." John 
Morley has well said that Voltaire's life, with its long challenge of all existing 
institutions, was of itself equivalent to a revolution. Voltaire is often incor- 
rectly called an atheist. Though not a Christian, he was a deist, —a firm 
believer in a God revealed in nature and in the human soul. 

2 Buckle, History of Civilization, opening of ch. xii, has a marvelous ten 
pages of proof of English influence. 

3 Some years before the French Revolution, these phrases and ideas of 
Rousseau were to have a powerful influence in America. They did not create 
the American Revolution, but they may have determined to some degree how 
tbat great movement should justify itself in words. The passages about 



318 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§304 

304. Philosophic Liberalism becomes Fashionable. — When the 
French writers began to attack hoary abuses, they ran extreme personal 
risks and played an heroic part. The same movement, however, that 
produced these men of letters was at work in all social circles. The 
writers intensified the movement; and, before long, criticism of social 
arrangements became general. Even the privileged orders began to talk 
about their own uselessness. When the great noble in a popular play was 
asked what he had done to deserve all his privileges, and when it was an- 
swered for him, " Your Excellency took the trouble to be born," the 
audience of nobles in the boxes laughed and applauded. Part of this 
new attitude was only sentimentality ; but there was also a real change. 
In the fifteen years just before the Revolution, society did become less 
artificial and less corrupt, and some of the nobles did try zealously to 
resume long-abandoned duties. 

Upon the whole, however, this new pity for the poor proved helpless to 
relieve them. The mass of the privileged classes remained selfish and 
scornful. The chief influence of the new philosophy was in its effect 
upon the unprivileged masses. The third estate was imbued with a new 
consciousness of its wrongs and of its power, and with a determination to 
secure its rights. Said a famous pamphlet of Siei/es (§ 314) on the eve of 
the Revolution, " What really is the third estate? Everything. What has 
it been so far in the state ? Nothing. What does it ask ? To be something.' ' 

F. ' Attempted Eeforms, from the Accession" of Louis XVI 
TO THE Meeting of the States General, 1774-1789. 

305. Character of the Sovereign. — In 1774, the dissolute but 
able Louis XV was succeeded by the well-disposed but irreso- 
lute Louis XVI. This Prince had a vague notion of what was 
right and a general desire to do it, but he lacked moral courage 
and will power. His weakness was as harmful to France as 
his predecessor's wickedness. He abandoned the wisest policy 
and the best ministers, rather than face the sour looks of the 
courtiers and the pouts of the Queen. 

natural equality and freedom in the Declaration of Independence and in many 
of the original state constitutions are popularly supposed to be due to Ameri- 
can admiration for Rousseau. Rousseau, however, drew these ideas to a great 
extent from John Locke and other English writers of the seventeenth cen- 
tury ; and we cannot always tell whether an American document is affected 
directly by Rousseau or by the older but less impressive English literature. 



§307] REFORMS ATTEMPTED BEFORE REVOLUTION. 319 

The Queen was Marie Antoinette, daughter of the great 
Maria Theresa of Austria. She was young, high-spirited, and 
lovely; but she had come to the vile court of Louis XV as 
a child-bride, and had grown up under its evil influence. 
Historians differ regarding her character, but, at the best, 
she was ignorant, frivolous, and selfishly bent upon her own 
pleasures, without the slightest comprehension of her real 
duties. The King was greatly influenced by her, and, in 
matters of government, almost always for evil. 

306. National Bankruptcy. — When Louis XVI came to the 
throne, the national debt was some five hundred million dollars, 
and it was increasing each year by ten million dollars more. 
This condition stirred the government to spasmodic attempts 
at reform. To the view of the court, the danger to France lay, 
not in the social injustice or in the misery of the masses, but 
merely in the empty treasury. Says Carlyle, with bitter scorn, 
"It is spiritual bankruptcy, long tolerated, now verging toward 
economic bankruptcy and become intolerable." 

307. Turgot. — Louis XVI at once called to his aid Turgot, 
a man of letters, a reformer, and an experienced administrator. 
Turgot had been an Intendant for many years, and had made 
remarkable improvements in his district. Now he set about 
conferring still greater benefits on all France. He abolished 
the corvee, the internal tariffs on grain, and the outgrown 
gilds, with their restrictions on the right to labor. The frivo- 
lous expenses of the court were cut down, and the absurd 
pension list was curtailed remorselessly. Turgot planned 
other vast and far-reaching reforms, — to recast the whole 
system of taxation, to equalize burdens, to abolish feudal dues, 
and to introduce a system of public education : " a whole 
pacific French Kevolution in that head," says Carlyle. But 
the Queen hated the reformer, who interfered with her pleas- 
ures ; and Louis, who had promised unfailing support, wavered, 
grew cold, and, after only twenty months, dismissed the man 
who might perhaps have saved France from a revolution of 
violence. 



320 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 308 

Turgot rejected impatiently all ideas of reform by the people. He 
wished no States General. He belonged to the autocratic reformers of 
the day, and he expected to refashion France through the despotic power 
of the monarch. At the same time he tried to secure the support of public 
opinion. He recommended his reforms to the public, and explained his 
purposes, in prefaces to the royal edicts. In abolishing the corvee, a 
proclamation said, "The roads are made by the forced labor of those 
who are least interested in roads." The edict abolishing restrictions on 
trade declared, "The right to work is the most sacred of possessions; 
every law by which it is infringed violates the natural rights of man, and 
is null and void of itself. . . . The existing corporations are grotesque 
and tyrannical monopolies, — results of the selfish avarice and violence 
of their privileged members, and of the fiscal avidity of the crown." 

Such language in royal documents was significant, and somewhat awk- 
ward when the crown soon afterward restored these "tyrannical monop- 
olies" ; but the striking fact was that the government should think it 
necessary to give its reasons at all. Soon it would be compelled to do so. 

308. Necker. — Turgot's reforms were swiftly undone; but 
after a little, in 1776, Necker, another reformer, was called to 
the helm. Necker was not a great statesman, but he was, a 
good business man with liberal sentiments ; and he might 
have accomplished something for the national finances, if his 
difficulties had not been tremendously augmented in an unfore- 
seen manner. In 1778, France joined America in the war 
against England. The new " loans " -^ to support the expense 
of the war greatly increased the national debt, and made it 
more impossible to pay the annual interest.^ Necker secured 
a number of minor reforms, and he enforced a strict economy, 

- 1 When a nation sells bonds to raise money, the proceeding is called a loan. 
2 The American Revolution directly helped to bring on the French Revolu- 
tion by sinking the French monarchy more hopelessly into bankruptcy. In 
other important but more indirect ways the American movement contributed to 
that in France. Lafayette and other young nobles who had served in Amer- 
ica came home with liberal ideas strengthened ; and the French regiments 
that had fought side by side with the American yeomanry had imbibed demo- 
cratic ideas and were soon to declare themselves "the army of the nation," 
not of the king. Said Arthur Young in 1789, "The American Revolution has 
laid the foundation for another one in France; " and again, " A strong leaven 
of independence has been increasing here every hour since the American 
Revolution." 



§310] EEFORMS ATTEMPTED BEFORE REVOLUTION. 321 

which angered the courtiers ; but finally he found himself 
forced to more radical measures. He laid before the King a 
plan for comprehensive reform, much along Turgot's lines ; 
but the universal outcry of the privileged classes caused Louis 
to dismiss him from office (1781). Just before that event, 
ISTecker published to the nation a detailed statement of the 
government's finances. This "yv^as a step farther than Turgot 
had gone in consulting the public. The statement showed in 
figures the miserable injustice of the existing system ; and the 
minister retired, hated by the privileged orders, but the idol 
of the people. 

309. Calonne and the Notables. — Once more, all the old 
abuses were restored. Then a new minister of finance, the 
courtly Calonne, adopted the policy of an unscrupulous bank- 
rupt and tried to create credit by lavish extravagance. For a 
time this was successful ; but in 1786 the annual deficit had 
risen to twenty-five million dollars, and even adroit Calonne 
could borrow no more money to pay expenses or interest. 
Under these conditions, the minister persuaded Louis to call 
together the Notables of France. 

Tlie Notables were not an elected body. They were com- 
posed of such leading nobles and clergy as the king pleased 
to summon. Still, this assembly, nearly a hundred and fifty 
strong, was in an imperfect way a representation of France. 
At least it represented the privileged orders. To the amazed 
Notables, Calonne suggested that the privileged orders give up 
their exemption from taxation. But all cried out against him, 
— the few Liberals for what he had done in the past, the many 
Conservatives for what he now proposed to do. 

310. The Parlement of Paris and the States General — Calonne 
gave way to a new minister, a favorite of the Queen, who found 
himself at once driven to the same plan. In fact it had become 
necessary to get more money, and that could be done only by 
taxing those who had something wherewith to pay. As the 
Notables were still stubborn, they were dismissed, and the 
King tried to force the plan upon the nobles by royal edict. 



322 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 311 

The Parlement of Paris, representing the privileged orders, 
refused to register the edict, and cloaked their dislike to reform 
under the excuse that the only poioer in France which could 
properly impose a neiv tax was the States General. Louis sum- 
moned resolution to banish the Parlement, but it had given a 
rallying cry to the nation. 

The States Geyieral (§ 154) had not met since 1614. Sugges- 
tions for assembling it had been made from time to time, ever 
since Louis XVI became king. At the session of the Notables, 
Lafayette had called for it. Now, after the action of the Parle- 
ment, the demand became universal and imperious. Finally, 
August, 1788, the King yielded, restored the Parlement, 
recalled iSTecker, and promised that the States General should 
be assembled. 

G. Summary. 

The States General were soon to inaugurate the Revolution. Before 
we take up that story, it is worth while to summarize the conditions and 
causes of the coming change. 

311. The Chief Institutions of France were : (1) a monarchy, central- 
ized, despotic, and irresponsible, but incumbered, ineffective, and in weak 
hands ; (2) an aristocracy, wealthy, privileged, corrupt, skeptical ; and 
(3) an established church, wealthy and often corrupt. Below these 
spread the masses, as a necessary but ugly substructure. 

Like conditions existed also over the continent of Europe. In France, 
as compared with the other large countries, the nobles had fewer duties, 
the peasantry had risen somewhat, and more of a middle class had grown 
up. That is, feudal society was more decayed and the industrial state was 
more advanced in France than in other continental countries. This ex- 
plains why the Revolution came in France. Revolutions break through 
in the weakest spots. 

312. The Causes of the Revolution classified. — First among the 
causes of the Revolution, we must put the unjust privileges of the small 
upper class and the crushing burdens borne by the great non-privileged 
mass. These evils, however, were no greater than for centuries before. 
But the consciousness of them was greater than ever before. Not only 
was the system bad, but men knew that it was bad. The masses were 
beginning to demand reform ; and the privileged classes and the govern- 
ment had begun to distrust their rights, and were to find their power of 



§313] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AT VERSAILLES. 323 

resistance weakened by such doubts. This new intellectual condition was 
due primarily to the new school of French men of letters, whose influence 
was strengthened by England and America. Then, the financial bank- 
ruptcy of the national treasury opened tlie way for other forces to act, 
and started the government itself upon the path of reform ; and the in- 
efficiency and indecision of the government led the people finally to seize 
upon the reform movement themselves, — a result greatly hastened by 
the political doctrines made popular just before by Rousseau. 

For Further Reading. — Source material may be found in the Penn- 
sylvania Reprints, IV, No 5 (examples of cahiers) ; V, No. 2 (Protest of 
the Cour des Aides) ; and VI, No. 1 (short extracts from French writers 
of the time). Stephens' Life and Writings of Turgot gives translations 
of the writings of the great reformer. Arthur Young's Travels in France 
in 1787-1789 is the best contemporary description. 

Modern accounts : Lowell's Eve of the French Revolution is perhaps 
the best one-volume survey, for popular purposes, though the work is 
based only on secondary authorities, and the view of the Old Regime is 
perhaps too cheerful. Maclehose's Last Days of the French Monarchy, 
Grant's Fall of the French Monarchy, Dabney's Causes of the French 
Revolution, and Kingsley's Ancient Regime are also good. Tocqueville's 
France before the Revolution (especially book ii, clis. i, vi, ix, and xii) 
and Taine's Ancient Regime (especially on classes of society, 13-85, and 
329-402) are among the greatest studies ever made of this period. John 
Morley's Lives of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, and his essays in his 
Miscellanies, upon "France in the Eighteenth Century" (Vol. Ill) and 
"Turgot" (Vol. II), are admirable and interesting. Say's Turgot is excel- 
lent, Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, V, ch. xx, and Buckle's 
History of Civilization, chs. viii-xiv, may be consulted by advanced stu- 
dents. The opening pages of most of the histories of the Revolution listed on 
page 343 have brief treatments of the conditions before 1789, — especially 
Shailer Mathews (pages 1-110), Mallet (5-50), and Gardiner (1-32). 

IIL FIRST PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION, MAY, 1789- 
AUGUST, 1792: CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 

A. The First Three Months : the Constituent 
'Assembly at Versailles. 

313. Election of the States General. — France had lost even 
the tradition of how to elect a States General. The govern- 
ment asked for suggestions, and learned societies showered 



324 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 314 

down pamphlets of advice. Finally the country was divided 
into districts ; the nobility and clergy of each district came 
together to choose their delegates ; and the delegates of the 
third estate were elected by a complex system of electoral 
colleges. In choosing these colleges, all tax payers had a voice. 
When finally chosen, the States General consisted of about six 
hundred members of the third estate, three hundred nobles, 
and three hundred clergy. Of this last order, two-thirds were 
cures. The delegates possessed almost no political experience ; 
but the bulk of the third estate were lawyers, and, as a whole, 
the gathering was scholarly and cultured. It contained no 
representatives from the '^ower classes." 

314. The States General becomes the National Assembly. — 
May 5, 1789, the King opened the States General at Ver- 
sailles.-^ Before the elections, the Liberals had demanded 
(1) double representation for the third estate (or as many repre- 
sentatives as the other two orders together), and (2) vote by 
member, instead of by three separate orders. The double 
representation had been granted, but the other half of the 
question had been left to settle itself. The nobles and the 
clergy proceeded to organize as separate chambers, after 
the ancient fashion. This would have given the privileged 
orders two votes, to one for the third estate, and would have 
blocked all vital reforms. The third estate insisted that all 
three orders should organize in a single chamber, where its 
double membership could outvote the other orders combined. 
With wise generalship, it refused to "usurp the right to 
organize" until it should have been joined by the other "dele- 
gates of the nation"; and there followed a deadlock for five 
weeks. 

But delay was serious. The preceding harvest had been a 

1 In the royal address, some reforms were suggested ; but it was plain that 
the King hoped mainly for more taxes, and enthusiastic Liberals were sadly 
disappointed. Even Necker's three-hour address, which followed the King's, 
dwelt almost exclusively upon the need of prompt action to relieve the finan- 
cial straits of the government. Read Carlyle's account of the procession. 



§315] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AT VERSAILLES. 325 

failure, and famine was abroad in the land. In Paris every 
bakeshop had its " tail " of men and women, standing through 
the night for a chance to buy bread. Such conditions called 
for speedy action, especially as the ignorant masses had got it 
into their heads that the marvelous States General would in 
some way make food plenty. Finally (June 17), on motion 
of Sieyes (§ 304), an ex-priest, the third estate declared that 
by itself it represented ninety-six per cent of the nation, and 
that, with or without the other orders, it would organize as a 
National Assembly.^ TJiis was a revolution. It changed a gather- 
ing of feudal Estates into an assembly representing the natioji as 
one whole. Nothing of this kind had ever been seen before on the 
continent of Europe. 

315. The Tennis Court Oath: the National Assembly becomes 
the Constituent Assembly. — Two days later, the National Assem- 
bly was joined by half the clergy (mainly cures) and by a few 
liberal nobles. But the next morning the Assembly found 
sentries at the doors of their hall and carpenters within putting 
up staging, to prepare for a " royal session." Plainly the King 
was about to interfere. The gathering adjourned to a tennis 
court near by, and there unanimously took a memorable oath^ 
never to separate until they had established the constitution on a 
firm foundation (June 20). 

This Tennis Court Oath marks an era. The idea of a 
written constitution came from America. Six years earlier, 
Franklin, our minister to France, had published French trans- 
lations of the constitutions adopted by the new American 
States. The pamphlet had been widely read, and had called 
forth much discussion. The instructions ^ of delegates to the 
Assembly had very commonly called, among other matters, for 

1 See Anderson's Constitutions and Documents, No. 1, for the decree. 

2 See the text in Anderson's Constitutions and Documents, No. 2. 

8 Nearly every gathering for choosing delegates to the Assembly, or even 
to the electoral colleges, had drawn up a statement of grievances and had 
suggested reforms, for the guidance of its representatives. These cahiers 
(ka-ya') are the most valuable source of our knowledge of France before the 
Revolution. See Pennsylvania Reprints, IV, No. 5, for examples. 



326 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§316 

a constitution, but, so far, the idea had lain rather in the back- 
ground. After the Tennis Court Oath, however, to make a 
constitution became the chief purpose of the Assembly ; and 
that body soon became known as the Constituent Assembly. 

On June 23, Louis summoned the three estates to meet him, 
and told them that they were to organize as separate bodies 
and to carry out certain specified reforms : if they failed to 
comply with the royal wishes, the King would himself " secure 
the happiness of his people." When the King left, the nobles 
and higher clergy followed. The new "N"ational Assembly" 
kept their seats. There was a moment of uncertainty. It was 
a serious matter for those quiet citizens to brave the wrath of 
the ancient monarchy. Mirabeau, soon to be known as the 
greatest man in France, — a noble who had abandoned his order, 
— rose to remind the delegates of their great oath. The Mar- 
quis de Breze, master of ceremonies, reentering, asked if they 
had not heard the King's command to disperse. '' Yes," broke 
in Mirabeau's thunder ; " but go tell your master that we are 
here by the power of the people, and that nothing but the 
power of bayonets shall drive us away." Then, upon Mira- 
beau's motion, the Assembly decreed the inviolability of its 
members : " Infamous and guilty of capital crime is any person 
or court that shall dare pursue or arrest any of them, on wJiose 
part soever the same he commanded." ^ 

The King's weakness prevented conflict, and perhaps it was 
as well for him ; for Paris was rising, and the French Guards, 
the main body of troops then in the capital, when ordered to 
fire on the mob, rang their musket butts sullenly on the pave- 
ment. The next day, forty-seven nobles joined the National 
Assembly, and in less than a week the King ordered the rest 
to enter. 

316. Paris saves the Assembly ; Fall of the Bastille. — How- 
ever, the court planned a counter-revolution. A camp of sev- 
eral thousand veterans was collected near Paris, — largely 

1 The royal declaration and this decree are in Anderson, No. 3. 



§316] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AT VERSAILLES. 327 

German or Swiss regiments who could be depended upon. 
Probably it was intended to imprison leading liberal deputies: 
certainly the Assembly was to be overawed or dissolved. 
July 9, Mirabeau boldly declared to the Assembly that such 
was the royal policy, and he secured an address from the 
Assembly to the King, solemnly requesting the immediate 
withdrawal of the troops. The King's answer was to b^iish 
Necker, who, as minister, had opposed the new royal policy. 
This was on the evening of July 11. About noon the next 
day, the news was whispered on the streets. Camille Des- 
moulins, a young journalist, pistol in hand, leaped upon a 
table in one of the public gardens, exclaiming, "Necker is 
dismissed. It is a signal for a St. Bartholomew of patriots. 
To arms ! To arms ! " By night the streets bristled with 
barricades against the charge of the King's cavalry, and the 
crowds were sacking bakeshops for bread and gun shops for 
arms. Three regiments of the French Guards joined tlie 
rebels. Various street conflicts took place. Some rude organi- 
zation was introduced during the next day; and, on the day 
following, the revolutionary forces attacked the Bastille. 

The Bastille was the great " state prison," like the Tower in 
England. In it had been confined political offenders and vic- 
tims of "letters of the seal." It was a symbol of the Old Regime 
and an object of detestation to the Liberals. It had been used 
as an arsenal, and the rebels went to it at first only to demand 
arms. Refused admission and fired upon, they made a frantic 
attack. The fortress was virtually impregnable ; but after 
some hours of wild onslaught, it surrendered to an almost 
unarmed force, — "taken," as Carlyle says, "like Jericho, by 
miraculous sound." The hangers-on of the attacking force 
massacred the garrison, and paraded their heads on pikes 
through the streets. Out at Versailles, Louis, who had spent 
the day hunting and had retired early, was awakened to hear 
the news. "What! a riot, then?" said he. "No, Sire," re- 
plied the messenger ; " a revolution." Soon after, the Bastille 
was razed to the ground, and the anniversary of its destruction 



328 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§317 

(July 14) is still celebrated in France as the birthday of 
political liberty.^ 

The rising of Paris had saved the Assembly. The most 
hated of the courtiers fled from France. The King visited 
Paris, sanctioned all that had been done, sent away the troops, 
accepted the tricolor, the badge of the Eevolution, as the 
national colors, and recalled Necker. 

317. Anarchy; and Reorganization on the Part of the Bour- 
geoisie : Municipal Councils and Guards. — The fall of the Bastille 
gave the signal for a brief mob-rule all over France. In towns, 
the mobs demolished local fortresses. In the country, the 
lower peasantry and bands of vagabonds plundered and demol- 
ished castles, seeking especially to destroy the court rolls, with 
the records of servile dues. Each district had its carnival of 
plunder, with outrage and bloodshed. 

More instructive than this anarchy, however, is the new 
order that evolved out of it. The King could not enforce the 
law : the machinery of the old royal government had simply 
collapsed. The A.ssembly did not dare interfere vigorously, 
because it might need the mob again for its own protection.^ 
But everywhere the middle class organized locally against an- 
archy. In Paris, during the disorder of July 13, the electoral 
college of the city met at the Hotel de Ville, and assumed the 
authority to act as the Municipal Council. In other munici- 
palities the like was done ; ^ and in a few weeks, France was 
covered with new local governments composed of the bour- 



1 Read Carlyle's account of the celebration of the fii'st anniversary. 

2 Six days after the fall of the Bastille, the moderate Liberals proposed to 
issue a proclamation denouncing popular violence. Frorii an obscure seat on 
the Extreme-Left, Robespierre, then an unknown deputy, protested vehe- 
mently: "Revolt? This revolt is liberty. To-morrow the shameful plots 
against us may be renewed, and who will then repulse them if we declare 
rebels the men who have rushed to our protection! " 

3 This was the easier, because in many cases the electoral colleges, instead 
of breaking up after the election, had continued to hold occasional meetings 
during the two months since, in order to correspond with their delegates in 
the National Assembly. Cf. Stephens, I, 192 ff. 



§318] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AT VERSAILLES. 329 

geoisie. The first act of the Paris provisional Council had 
been to order that in each of the sixty " sections " (wards) of 
the city, two hundred men should patrol the streets, to main- 
tain order. This, or something like this, was done in all the 
districts of France. The new militia became permanent. It 
took the name National Guards, and in Paris Lafayette be- 
came the commander. Like the new municipal councils, the 
Guards were made up from the middle class; and before the 
middle of August, these new forces had restored order.^ 

318. Abolition of "Privilege." — Meantime, on the evening of 
August 4, the discussions of the Assembly were interrupted by 
the report of a committee on the disorders throughout the coun- 
try. The account stirred the Assembly deeply. One of the 
young nobles who had served in America declared that these 
evils were all due to the continuance of feudal burdens, and, 
with impassioned oratory, he moved their instant abolition. 
One after another, in eager emulation, the liberal nobles fol- 
lowed, each moving some sacrifice for his order, — game laws, 
dovecotes, tithes, exclusive right to military office, and a mass 
of sinecures and pensions.^ In like manner, representatives of 
the towns moved the surrender of ancient and exclusive rights 
possessed by their cities. Every proposal was ratified with 
applause. Our American minister, Gouverneur Morris, was 
disgusted with the haste, and even Mirabeau called the scene 
" an orgy of sacrifice." One night accomplished what might 
well have taken a year's calm debate, and no doubt much con- 
fusion and hardship resulted ; but, on the whole, the work was 
necessary and noble, and it has never been undone. The night 
of August 4- saw the end of feudalism and of legal inequalities 
in France.^ 



1 Taine gives the darkest picture of the disorders ; see French Revolution, 
book iii, chs. i and ii. For the opposite view, see Stephens, I, eh. vi. 

2 This surrender was voluntary : it was not caused by the action of the 
third estate. 

s Anderson, No. 4, and Pennsylvania Reprints, 1, No. 5, give the decrees 
as finally put in order a few days later. 



330 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 319 

319. Summary : May 5 to August 5. — Thus in three months Erance 
had been revolutionized. The third estate had asserted successfully its 
just claim to represent the nation, and had compelled the King and the 
privileged orders to acknowledge its right to recast society and govern- 
ment. The odious inequalities at law and the class distinctions of the Old 
Regime had been forever swept away. The local units of the country had 
already set up new popular governments, and had organized new citizen 
armies to protect them : and the Assembly was hard at work upon a new 
constitution for the nation at large. 



B. The CoisrsTiTUENT Assembly in Paris, October, 1789- 

OCTOBER, 1791. 

320. The March of the Women, October 5. — Two years more 
were spent iu making the constitution and in putting it into 
operation, piece by piece. Early in this period the scene 
changed from Versailles, with its danger of royal interference, 
to Paris, with its mob influence. Even after the new harvest 
of 1789, food rejnained scarce and riots continued. To main- 
tain order, the King brought to Versailles one of the foreign 
regiments. Suspicion awoke that he was again plotting to 
undo the Revolution. Extravagant loyal demonstration at a 
military banquet emphasized the suspicion. It was reported 
that young officers, to win the favor of court ladies, had tram- 
pled upon the tricolor and had displayed instead the old white 
cockade of the Bourbon monarchy. The men of Paris tried 
to go to Versailles to secure the person of the King, but the 
National Guards turned them back. Then thousands of the 
women of the market place, crying that French soldiers would 
not fire upon women, set out in a wild, hungry, haggard rout 
to bring the King to Paris. In their wake, followed the riff- 
raff of the city. Lafayette permitted the movement to go on, 
until there came near being a terrible massacre at Versailles ; 
but his tardy arrival, late at night, with twenty thousand 
National Guards, restored order. In the early morning, how- 
ever, the mob broke into the palace ; and probably the Queen's 
life was saved only by the gallant self-sacrifice of some of her 



§321] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY IN PARIS. 331 

guards. The King yielded to the demands of tlie crowd and 
to the advice of Lafayette; and the same day a strange pro- 
cession escorted the royal family to Paris, — the mob dancing 
in wild joy along the road before the royal carriage, carrying 
on pikes the heads of the slaii> soldiers, and shouting, " Now 
we shall have bread, for we are bringing the baker, the baker's 
wife, and the baker's little boy." ^ The King's brothers and 
great numbers of the nobles fled from France ; and many of 
these "Emigrants" strove at foreign courts to stir up war 
against their country, so that the name "Emigrant" became 
hateful to all patriotic Frenchmen. 

321. The Assembly in Paris : Parties ; the Galleries ; the Clubs. 
— Gradually the Assembly divided into parties. On the 
Speaker's right, the place of honor, sat the extreme Conserva- 
tives, known from their position as the Right. They were 
reactionists, and stood for the restoration of the old order. 
Kext to them sat the Right-Center. This party did not expect 
to restore the old conditions, but they did hope to prevent the 
Revolution from going any farther, and they wished to keep 
political power in the hands of the wealthy landowners. The 
Left-Centsr, the largest body, wished neither to restrict power 
to the very wealthy, nor to extend it to the very poor, but to 
intrust it to the middle class. In this group sat Mirabeau, 
Lafgiyette, and Sieyes. Both parties of the Center wished a 
constitutional monarchy. The Extreme-Left^ comprised some 
thirty deputies who were disciples of Rousseau. They wished 
manhood suffrage, and possibly they already believed in a 
republic, though at the time they had no serious hope of one. 
In this group sat Robespierre. 

1 Read Carlyle's account of this March of the Women. For another pic- 
ture, see Taine, French Revolution, I, 96-107. 

2 In the legislatures of continental Europe a like arrangement of parties is 
still customary. The Conservatives sit on the right, the Liberals on the left ; 
and they are still known by the party names, the Right and the Left. In 
England, the supporters of the ministry sit on the right, and the opposition 
on the left, and the two parties change places with a change of ministry; so 
in that country the "Left" and the "Right" are not party names. 



332 . THE FRENCH EEVOLUTION. [§ 322 

When the Assembly followed the King to Paris, nearly a 
fourth of the members withdrew, declaring that the delibera- 
tions were now controlled by the mob. Among the with- 
drawals were some of the earliest leaders of reform, but of 
course the great body of them came from the Eight. The ses- 
sions were all public, and the galleries interrupted unpopular 
and conservative speakers with jeers or threats, and sometimes 
attacked them afterward on the streets. Sometimes, too, the 
galleries were packed by a mob paid to hiss down certain 
speakers and to secure the passage of particular measures. 

Another important political power was found in the clubs. 
Of these the most important was the Jacobins} Here some 
of the deputies of the Left-Center met to discuss measures 
that were about to come up in the Assembly, Others beside 
deputies were admitted, and the club became the chief organ 
of the radical democracy. Lafayette and Mirabeau tried to 
counteract the Jacobin infliience by organizing a Constitution- 
alist Club, of more moderate sentiments ; but, as with vari- 
ous royalist clubs, the effort came to little. The clubs, like 
the galleries, were best suited to add strength to the Extreme- 
Left. 

322. Mirabeau and his Plan. — One man in the Assembly 
was a party in himself. Mirabeau was a marvelous orator, a 
statesman of profound insight, and a man of dauntless courage. 
He never hesitated to oppose the mob, if his convictions 
required it; and often he won them to his side. But he had 
lived a wild and dissolute life, and so could not gain influence 
over some of the best elements of the Assembly, while his 
arrogance aroused much jealousy. Both Necker and Lafay- 
ette hated him. 

Mirabeau was resolutely opposed to anarchy, and he believed 
in a stronger executive than the Assembly was willing to 
create. After the events of October, he saw truly that the 

1 It took its name from the fact that it met in a building belonging to the 
Dominican friars. This order in Paris was called Jacobins, because its first 
homo in the city had been at the church of St. Jacques. 



§323] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY IN PAEIS. 333 

danger to the Eevolution lay not so much in the weakened 
King as in the mob; and thereafter, he sought to preserve the 
remaining royal power and to direct it. He wished the King 
to accept the Revolution in good faith, and to surround himself 
with a liberal ministry chosen from the Assembly. Ko doubt, 
Mirabeau expected to be the guiding genius of that ministry. 
His hopes were ruined by a decree of the Assembly that no 
deputy should take office under the King. Almost fatally 
thwarted, Mirabeau sought next to become the King's unofficial 
adviser ; and, as the mob grew more furious, he wished the 
King to leave Paris and to raise the provinces against the capi- 
tal in behalf of the Revolution so far accomplished.^ 

323. Attempted Flight of the King: Clash between Constitu- 
tionalist Bourgeoisie and Republican Mob. — The King hesitated, 
and Mirabeau died (April 2, 1791), broken down by the strain 
of his work. Then Louis decided upon a wild modification of 
Mirabeau's plan. He would flee, not to the French provinces, 
but to Austria, to raise war not against the Paris mob but 
against Prance and the Revolution. The plot failed, because 
of the King's indecision and clumsiness. The royal family 
did get out of Paris (June 20, 1791) and well toward the 
frontier, but they were recognized, arrested, and brought back 
as prisoners.^ 

This attempt of the King led to another popular rising, this 
time not to save the Assembly from the King, but to force the 
Assembly to dethrone the King. A petition for such action 
and for the establishment of a republic was drawn up, and 
crowds flocked out from Paris to the Champs de Mars to sign 
it. Some disorder occurred. The municipal authorities seized 
the excuse to forbid the gathering; and finally Lafayette's 
National Guards dispersed the jeering mob with volleys of 
musketry. This " Massacre of the Champs de Mars " (July 17) 



^ Exercise : report upon Mirabeau's sincerity. Note tlie excellent statement 
in Gardiner's French Revolution, 82-85. 

2 Read Carlyle's interesting account. See Anderson for documents. 



334 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 324 

took place three days after the second anniversary of the Fall 
of the Bastille, and indeed it was connected with the celebra- 
tion of that event. It marks a sharp division between the mob 
and the bourgeoisie. For the time, the latter carried the day. 
In the next six weeks the victorious Assembly completed and 
revised its two-years' work; and September 14, 1791, after 
solemnly swearing to uphold the constitution, Louis was restored 
to power. 

C. The Constitution" of 1791. 

324. General Characteristics. — The constitution made all 
Frenchmen equal before the law and equally eligible to public 

-employment; it permitted no exemptions, no special privileges, 
no hereditary titles; and it established jury trial, freedom of 

•conscience, and freedom of the press. ^ That is, socially it 
aimed to secure equality for all citizens and uniformity for all 

. provinces of France, with a large amount of personal liberty. 
Politically, it provided for a limited monarchy, with extreme 
decentralization (i.e. a large amount of local self-government) 
and with middle-class control. 

325. Local Government. — The historic provinces, with their 
troublesome traditions of peculiar privileges and customs, were 
wiped from the map. France was divided into eighty-three 
"departments," of nearly equal size. The departments were 
subdivided into districts (arrondissements) \ and the district 
was made up of communes (villages or towns, with their adja- 
cent territory). Each department and district elected a " Gen- 
eral Council " and an executive board, or " Directory." The 
forty thousand communes had each its elected Council and 
mayor. So much authority was left to the communes, that 
France under this constitution has beeii called "a loose 
alliance of forty thousand little republics." ^ 

1 Read the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," in the Pennsylvania Re- 
prints, I, No. 5, or in Anderson, No. 5. 

2 The extreme decentralization was not to last long, hut the plan of the 
local government in many respects survives to-day. 



§328] THE CONSTITUTION OF 1791. ' 335 

326. The Central Government was made to consist of the king 
and a Legislative Assembly of one chamber. The Assembly 
was to be elected anew each two years. The king could not 
dissolve it, and his veto upon any measure could be overridden 
by the action of three successive legislatures. Indeed, one 
serious error of the constitution was in weakening the execu- 

.tive unreasonably, so that it became little more than a figure- 
head. 

327. The Franchise. — Middle-class supremacy was secured 
by graded property qualifications and by a system of indirect 
elections} Citizens who did not pay taxes equal in amount to 
at least three days' wages for an artisan had no vote. These 
"passive citizens" made about one-fourth the adult male popu- 
lation. The other three-fourths were known as " active citi- 
zens." They composed the National Guards and the primary 
political assemblies in each commune; but to hold even the 
lower offices was possible only to those who paid a higher tax, 
such as to shut out all workmen. Out of these " more active " 
citizens, the primary assemblies elected municipal authorities 
and chose district electoral colleges. From those who paid 
still higher taxes, these electoral colleges elected district and 
departmental authorities, and chose departmental electoral 
colleges, which elected deputies to the National Assembly. 

328. The Church under the New Constitution. — For much of 
its existence, the Constituent Assembly had been forced to 
wrestle with the problem of an empty treasury and to find 
means to run the government. In the disorders of 1789, peo- 
ple ceased to pay the old taxes, and it was many months before 
a new system could be devised and put into operation. Mean- 
time the Assembly secured funds by seizing and selling the 
church lands, — more than a fifth of all France and over a 
half-billion of dollars in value. 

1 Both these devices to dodge democracy were employed in the American 
states of that day. Advanced students may search the constitutions of the 
thirteen states for illustrations. No state had manhood suffrage ; and, of the 
thirteen, five allowed only owners of real estate to vote. 



336 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§329 

At first, sales were slow ; and so, with these lands as security, the 
Assembly issued paper money (assignats), which was received again by 
the government in payment for the lands. This currency was issued in 
such vast amounts that it depreciated rapidly, i Serious hardships fol- 
ioijyed ; ^ but in the final outcome, the lands passed in small parcels into 
the hands of the peasantry and the middle class, and so laid the founda- 
tion for future prosperity. A later Assembly (the Convention, §§ 338 ff,), 
in like manner seized and sold the land of the Emigrant nobles, when 
that class levied war against France. Thus France became a land of 
small farmers, and the peasantry rose to a higher standard of comfort 
than such a class in Europe had ever known. 

When the government took the revenue of the church, of 
covirse it also assumed the duty of paying the clergy and 
maintaining the churches. This led promptly to national con- 
trol and reorganization. The number of higher clergy was 
greatly reduced. Ecclesiastical organization was based upon 
the new local divisions, and only one bishop was allotted to 
each department. Unfortunately, the clergy of all grades 
were made elective, in the same way as other civil officers, 
and were required to take an oath of fidelity to the constitu- 
tion in a form repulsive to many sincere adherents to the 
pope. Only four of the old bishops took the oath ; and two- 
thirds the cures, including no doubt the most sincere and con- 
scientious among them, were driven into opposition to the 
Revolution. On the other hand, the elected " Constitutional 
clergy" contained many men who had little interest in re- 
ligion. The greatest error of the Constituent Assembly was in 
so arraying against each other patriotism and the old religion. 

D. The Legislative Assembly and Foreign War. 

329. Elections. Influence of the Jacobin Organization. — France 

■ had been made over in two years, — on the whole with little 

violence, — and the bulk of the nation accepted the result 

1 Cf. our " Continental currency " of a few years earlier. 

2 In the financial difficulties all Necker's popularity vanished, and he finally 
retired from office, thoroughly discredited by all parties. 



§330] LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND FOREIGN WAR. 337 

enthusiastically, except as to some portions of the new organi- 
zation of the church. Most men believed that the Revolu- 
tion was over ; and moderate Liberals very largely withdrew 
from active politics, not even attending the polls. On the 
other hand, a small but vigorous minority of radical spirits 
was dissatisfied with the restrictions on the franchise and 
with the restoration of monarchy. This minority possessed 
undue weight, because of its superior organization in political 
clubs over France. These clubs took the name Jacobin. 
They were all closely affiliated with the mother-club in Paris, 
and were strictly obedient to its suggestions. No other party 
had any political machinery whatever. Moreover, the Jacobins 
had the sympathy of the " passive citizens " ; and in many 
cases these citizens, though they had no vote, proved an im- 
portant factor in the election, terrorizing the more conservative 
elements by mob-violence. 

330. Composition and Parties. — By a nobly intended but 
unwise law, the Constituent Assembly had made its meml?ers 
ineligible to seats in the Legislative Assembly, where their 
political experience would have been of the utmost value. 
The seven hundred and forty-five members of the Legisla- 
tive Assembly were all new men. On the whole, too, they 
were of lower ability than the preceding Assembly. They 
were mostly young provincial lawyers and journalists ; and 
there was not among them all one great proprietor or practical 
administrator. 

The old Eight and Eight-Center of the first Assembly had 
no successors in the second. The new Eight corresponded to 
the old Left-Center. Its members were known as Constitu- 
tionalists (or Feuillants), because they wished to preserve the 
constitution as it was. Outside the House, this party was 
represented by Lafayette,^ who, since the death of Mirabeau, 
wag the most influential man in France. In the Assembly, 



^ Students may profitably compare the estimates of Lafayette by different 
historians. Carlyle is severe; Mallet, 116-118, gives a judicial summary. 



338 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§331 

the party counted about one hundred regular adherents, but, 
for a time, the four hundred members of the Center, or " The 
Plain," voted with it on most questions. The Plain, how- 
ever, was gradually won over to the more radical views of the 
Left. This section of the Assembly consisted of about two 
hundred and forty delegates, many of them connected with 
the Jacobin clubs. The greater part were to become known 
as Girondists} They wished a republic, but they were un- 
willing to use unconstitutional means to get one. * They feared 
and hated the Paris mob, and they wished to intrust power to 
the provinces rather than to the capital. The leaders were 
hot-headed, eloquent young men, with ability for feeling and 
phrasing fine sentiments, but with no fitness for action. The 
members of the Extreme-Left, known from their elevated seats 
as the "Mountain," were the quintessence of Jacobinism. This 
party wished a democratic government by whatever means might 
off.er, and it contained the men of action in the Assembly. 

331. The War Policy. — The significant fact about the Legis- 
lative Assembly was its influence in hurrying on foreign war. 
The Emigrants, breathing threats of invasion and vengeance, 
were gathering in arms on the Rhine, under protection of 
German princes. They were supported by mercenary troops, 
and they had secret sympathizers within Erance. In the 
winter, a treacherous plot to betray to them the great fortress 
of Strasburg all but succeeded. The danger was certainly 
real ; but a proper though stern decree of the Assembly, con- 
demning to death all Emigrants who should not return to 
Erance before a certain date, fell before the royal veto. 

Back of the Emigrants loomed the danger of foreign -inter- 
vention. The attempted flight of Louis in June had revealed 
his true position as a prisoner. His brother-in-law, the Em- 
peror Leopold, then sent to the sovereigns of Europe a circular 
note (the Padua Letter), calling for common action against 



1 From the Gironde, the name of a department from which the leaders 
came. 



§332] LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY AND FOREIGN WAR. 339 

the Revolution, inasmucli as the cause of Louis was "the cause 
of kings " ; and a few days later, Leopold and the King of 
Prussia united in the Declaration of Pilnitz,^ asserting their 
intention to arm, in order to act in aid of their "brother" 
Louis. Thus war was almost inevitable. The Revolution 
stood for a new social order. It and the old order could not 
live together. Its success was a standing invitation to revolu- 
tion in neighboring lands. If the cause of Louis was "the 
cause of kings," so was the cause of the Revolution "the cause 
of peoples " ; and the kings felt that they must crush it before 
it spread. 

However, both Leopold and the Constituent Assembly had 
wished to avoid war if possible ; and after Louis accepted the 
constitution in September, Leopold withdrew his offensive- 
declaration. But the reception given the Emigrants within 
the Empire renewed the hard feeling; and the Legislative 
Assembly, unlike its predecessor, welcomed the prospect of 
war. It demanded of Leopold that he disperse the armies of 
the Emigrants and that he apologize for the Declaration 
of Pilnitz. Leopold replied with a counter-demand for a 
change in the French government such as to secure Europe 
against the spread of Revolutionary movements. He had 
finally decided upon war. Just at this moment, Leopold died, 
but his successor, Francis II, was even more eager for war. 
Compromise was no longer possible, and in April, 1792, France 
declared war against Austria. For the next twenty-three years 
Europe was involved in almost constant strife, upon a greater 
scale than ever before in history. 

332. Attitude of Parties and Leaders. — The attempts of Ger- 
man princes to dictate the internal policy of the French people 
rightly aroused a tempest of scorn and wrath ; but the light- 
heartedness with which the Assembly rushed into a war for 
which France was so ill-prepared is at first a matter of 
wonder. 

1 See Anderson, Nos. 13, 14, for this and for the Padua Letter. 



340 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 332 

The explanation, however, is not hard to find. The Consti- 
tutionalists expected war to strengthen the executive (as it 
would have done if Louis had honestly gone with the nation), 
and they hoped also that it would increase their own power, 
since their leader, Lafayette, was now in command of the most 
important army jof France. On the other hand, the Girondists 
and the bulk of the Assembly suspected Louis of being in 
secret league with Austria (suspicions only too well founded), 
and they knew that France was filled with spies and plotters 
in the interests of the Emigrants. The nervous strain of such 
a situation was tremendous, and the majority of the Assembly 
preferred open war to this terror of secret treason. Moreover, 
the Girondists hoped vaguely that the disorders of war might 
offer some good excuse to set up a republic. 

Indeed, the only voices raised against the war were from the 
Mountain and its sympathizers in the Jacobin club. Strangely 
enough, both Constitutionalists and Girondists were to find their 
ruin in the war they so recklessly invited, while the three men 
most active in opposing it — Robespierre, Danton, and Marat — 
were to be called by it to virtual dictatorship. 

Marat had been a physician of considerable eminence and of high 
scientific attainments. His nature was jealous and suspicious, and he 
seems to have become half-crazed under the straui of the Revolution. 
Early in the days of the Constituent Assembly, his paper, "The Friend of 
the People," began to preach the assassination of all aristocrats. Marat 
was moved, however, by sincere pity for the poor and oppressed ; and he 
opposed war, because, as he said, its suffering always fell finally upon the 
poor. 

Bobespierre before the Revolution had been a precise young lawyer 
in a provincial town. He had risen to the position of judge, the highest 
he could ever expect to attain ; but he had resigned his office because he 
had conscientious scruples against imposing a death penalty upon a crim- 
inal. He was an enthusiastic disciple of Rousseau. He was narrow, 
dull, pedantic, logical, envious, incorruptible, sincere. " That man is 
dangerous," Mirabeau had said of him ; " he w'M go far; he believes every 
word he says." In the last months of the Constituent Assembly, Robes- 
pierre had advanced rapidly in popularity and power ; and now, although 
without a seat in the Assembly, he was the most influential member of 



§333] BREAKDOWN OF THE CONSTITUTION IN WAR. 341 

the Jacobin Club. He opposed the war, because he feared what the Con- 
stitutionalists hoped, — a strengthening of -the executive, 

Danton was a Parisian lawyer. He had early become prominent in the 
radical clubs ; and next to Mirabeau he was the strongest man brought 
to notice in the early years of the Revolution, He was well named "the 
Mirabeau of the Market Place." He was a large, forceful, shaggy, 
nature, and a born leader of men. Above all, he was a man of action. 
Not without a rude eloquence himself, he had no patience with the fine 
speechifying of the Girondists, when deeds not words were wanted. He 
opposed the war, because he saw how unprepared France was and how 
unfit her leaders. When it came, he was to brush aside these incompe- 
tent leaders and himself to organize France. 

For Further Reading. — The three best one-volume histories of the 
Revolution are those by Shailer Mathews, Mallet, and Mrs, Gardiner ; 
the two latter are somewhat conservative. There are excellent brief 
treatments in H, Morse Stephens' B evolutionary Europe, 1789-1815, 
Rose's B evolutionary and Napoleonic Era, and Morris' French Bevolu- 
tion. The best of the larger works in English is H, Morse Stephens' 
History of the French Bevolution (3 vols,). Taine's French Bevolntion 
(3 vols.) is violently anti-democratic, Carlyle's French Bevolution re- 
mains the most powerful and vivid presentation of the forces and of many 
of the episodes of the Revolution, and it should certainly be read ; but it 
can be used to best advantage after some preliminary study upon the age, 
and it is sometimes inaccurate ; it should be used in one of the recently 
edited and annotated editions (cf. bibliography at the close of this volume). 
Among the biographies, the following are especially good : Belloc's Danton, 
Belloc's Bobespierre, Willert's Mirabeau, Blind's Madam Boland, and 
Morley's " Robespierre " (in Miscellanies, I), For fiction, Dickens' Tale 
of Two Cities and Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three are notable. (The last 
half dozen titles pertain especially to the period treated in the next 
Division.) Anderson's Constitutions and Documents and the Pennsyl- 
vania Beprints, I, No. 5, contain illustrative source material. 



IV. SECOND PERIOD, 1792-1795: THE FIRST FRENCH RE- 
PUBLIC UNDER REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT. 

A. Breakdown of the Constitution in War. 

333. New Character imparted to the Revolution by War. — The 

internal conditions in France would have led in any case to further con- 
stitutional changes. If France had been left to herself, however, these 



342 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§334 

future changes might have been brought about as quietly as the earlier 
ones ; but in the terrible stress of foreign war, the Revolution took on 
■a new character of bloodshed and violence. 

The massacres and disorders which we are now to survey, and which 
have brought reproach upon the Revolution, were not a necessary part 
of the Revolution itself, but were incidental to the fear of foreign con- 
quest. Not the Revolution proper, but the war, caused the "Reign of 
Terror" (§344). Even in internal policy, the Revolution was thrown 
by the war into the hands of extremists who were able to carry through 
sweeping changes under the color of "war measures." 

334. June 20 : the Mob invades the Tuileries. — At the decla- 
ration of war, the raw French levies at once invaded Belgium 
(then an Austrian province), but were rolled back in two 
defeats. The German Powers, however, were no more ready 
than France, and a few weeks more for preparation were 
given before the storm broke. The Assembly decreed the ban- 
ishment of all non-juring priests, many of whom were spies, 
and the formation of a camp of twenty thousand chosen 
patriots to guard the capital. Louis vetoed both Acts,^ and 
immediately afterward he dismissed his Liberal ministers 
(June 13). The populace was convinced that he was using his 
power treasonably, to prevent effective opposition to the ene- 
mies of France; and on June 20 there occurred an armed rising 
like those of July and October, 1789. An immense throng 
presented to the Assembly a monster petition against the 
King's policy, and then broke into the Tuileries, the palace of 
the royal family. For hours a dense throng surged through 
the apartments. Louis was crowded into a window, and stood 
there patiently, not without courageous dignity. A red cap, 

1 Despite the veto, a small camp was formed, under the pretense of cele- 
brating the festival of the destruction of the Bastille. Among the forces so 
collected were the six hundred Marseillaise, sent in response to the call of the 
deputy of Marseilles for "six hundred men who knew how to die." These 
men were to be the chief reliance in the coming insurrection of August 10 
(§ 335) . They entered Paris, singing a new battle hymn, which was afterward 
chanted on many a Revolutionary battle field and which was to become 
famous as The Marseillaise. Special report: the Marseillaise. Cf. Felix 
Gras' The Reds of the Midi. 



§335] BREAKDOWN OF THE CONSTITUTION IN WAR. 343 

sign of the Revolution, was handed him, and he put it upon 
his head ; but to all demands for a recall of his vetoes he made 
firm refusal. By nightfall the building was cleared. Little 
harm had been done, except to furniture ; and indeed the mob 
had shown throughout a surprising good-nature. 

There followed an outburst of loyalty from the Moderates. 
Lafayette, in command on the frontier, left his troops and has; 
tened to Paris, to demand the punishment of the leaders of the 
mob and the closing of the Jacobin Club. The middle class 
was ready to rally about him ; and, if the King had been will- 
ing to join himself to the Constitutionalists, Lafayette might 
have saved the government. But the royal family secretly 
preferred to trust to the advancing Austrians ; and Lafayette 
was rebuffed and scorned. Even yet he might have seized a 
temporary dictatorship by force, and saved the King in spite 
of himself, but either conscience or timidity withheld him. 
He returned to his army, and the management of affairs passed 
rapidly to the Jacobins. The Moderates had lost their last 
chance. 

335. Insurrection of August lo : Deposition of Louis. — France 
was girdled with foes. The Empire, Prussia, and Sardinia 
were in arms ; Naples and Spain were soon to join the coali- 
tion ; Sweden and Russia both offered to do so, if they were 
needed. In July a Prussian army, commanded by old officers 
of Frederick the Great, crossed the frontier ; and two Austrian 
armies, one from the Netherlands and one from the upper 
Rhine, converged upon the same line of invasion. The Erench 
levies were outnumbered three to one. Worse still, they were 
utterly demoralized by the resignation of many officers in the 
face of the enemy and by a justifiable suspicion that many 
of those remaining sympathized with the invaders. Within 
Erance were royalist risings and plots of risings ; and the 
King was in secret alliance with the enemy .^ 



1 There is no doubt now that the Queen had even communicated the French 
plan of campaign to the Austrians. 



3J:4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 335 

Brunswick, the Prussian commander, counted upon a holiday 
march to Paris. July 25, he issued to the French people his 
famous proclamation, written by the Emigrants, declaring that 
the allies entered Prance to restore Louis to his place, that all 
men taken with arms in their hands should be hanged, and 
that, if Louis were injured, he would ''inflict a memorable 
vengeance " by delivering up Paris to military execution.^ 

This insolent paper was fatal to the King. Patriotic France 
rose in rage and defiance, to hurl back the boastful invader. 
But before the new troops marched to the front, some of them 
insisted upon guarding against enemies in the rear. The Jaco- 
bins had decided that Louis should not be left free to paralyze 
national action at some critical moment by his veto. They 
demanded his deposition ; but the Girondists were not ready 
for such extreme action. Then the Jacobins carried their 
point by insurrection. Led by Danton, they displaced the 
municipal council of Paris with a new government^ represent- 
ing the most radical elements, and this " Commune of Paris " 
publicly prepared an attack upon the Tuileries for August 10. 
If Louis had possessed ability or decision, his Guards might 
have repulsed the mob; but, as it was, after confusing them 
with contradictory orders, the King and his family fled to the 
Assembly, leaving the faithful Swiss regiment to be massacred. 
Bloody from this slaughter, the rebels forced their way into 
the hall of the Assembly to demand the King's instant deposi- 
tion. Two-thirds of the deputies had fled, and the "rump " of 
Girondists and Jacobins decreed the deposition and imprison- 
ment of Louis, and the immediate election, hy manJiood suffrage, 
of a Convention to decide upon the government of France.^ 



1 Anderson, No. 23, gives the Declaration, 

2 Special report : the details of this reorganization of the government of 
Paris ; see especially the account in Stephens' French Revolution. 

3 This was the first trial of manhood suffrage in any modern nation. Cf. 
§ 327, note. The only exception in this case was the class of male domestic 
servants, who, it was feared, would be influenced by their employers, and who, 
therefore, were not permitted to vote. The decree is given by Anderson. 



J 



§336] BREAKDOWN OF THE CONSTITUTION IN WAR. 345 

Lafayette arrested the Legislative Commissioners who 
brought him the news, and tried to lead his troops against Paris 
to restore the King. He found his army unwilling to follow 
him, and so he fled to the Austrians.-"- The nation at large had 
not desired the new revolution, but it accepted it as inevitable, 
and chose a Convention which was to ratify it unanimously. 
The nation was more concerned with repulsing foreign foes than 
with balancing nice questions as to praise or blame in Paris. 

336. The September Massacres. — The same causes that led 
to the rising of August 10, led, three weeks later, to one of the 
most terrible events in history. The "■ Commune of Paris," 
under Danton's leadership, had packed the prisons with three 
thousand " suspected " aristocrats, to prevent a royalist rising. 
Then, on August 29 and September 2, came the news of the 
shameful surrender of Longwy and Verdun, — two great fron- 
tier fortresses guarding the road to Paris. Paris was thrpwn 
into a panic of fear, and the Paris volunteers hesitated to go 
to the front, lest the numerous prisoners recently arrested 
should break out and avenge themselves upon the city, stripped 
of its defenders. So, while Danton was pressing on enlist- 
ments and hurrying recruits to meet Brunswick, the frenzied 
mob attacked the prisons, organized rude lynch-courts, and on 
September 2, 3, and 4, massacred over a thousand of the pris- 
oners with only the shadow of a trial.^ These events are known 
as " the September massacres." 

How far the Jacobin leaders were responsible for starting 
the atrocious executions at the prisons will probably never 
be known. Certainly they did not try to stop them ; but 
neither did the Assembly, nor the Gironde leaders, nor any 
other body of persons in Paris.^ The Jacobins, however, did 



1 Read Carlyle's account. Lafayette was cast into prison by the Austrians, 
to remain there until freed by the victories of Napoleon. 

2 The fairest account in English of these massacres is that by Stephens. 
II, 141-150. 

3 The apathy in Paris at the time of these events is amazing. Mallet, 
page 179, has a good brief statement. Says Carlyle: *' Very desirable indeed 



346 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 337 

openly accept the massacres, when once accomplished, as a 
useful means of terrifying the royalist plotters and of unify- 
ing France. When the Assembly talked of punishment, Dauton 
excused the deed, and urged action instead against the enemies 
of France. " It was necessary to make our enemies afraid," 
he cried, "... Blast my memory, but let France be free." 

B. The Eevolution makes Converts with the Sword. 

337. France at War with Kings. — After August 10, Danton 
became the leading member of a provisional executive com- 
mittee, and at once infused new vigor into the government. 
" We must dare," his great voice rang out to the doubting 
Assembly, "and dare again, and ever dare, — and France is 
saved ! " In this spirit he toiled, night and day, to raise and 
arm and organize recruits. France responded with the finest 
outburst of patriotic military enthusiasm the world has ever 
seen in a great civilized state. September 20 the advanc- 
ing Prussians were checked at Valmy ; and November 9 the 
victory of Jemmapes, the first real pitched battle of the war, 
opened Belgium to French conquest. Another French army 
had already entered Germany, and a third had occupied Nice 
and Savoy. 

These successes of the raw but devoted French soldiery over 
the veterans of Europe intoxicated the nation, and called forth 
an orgy of democratic enthusiasm. The new National Conven- 
tion (§ 338) became, in Danton's phrase, " a general committee 
of insurrection for all nations." Flamed out one fiery orator, — 
" Despots march against us with fire and sword : we will bear 
against them liberty ! " The Convention ordained a manifesto 
in all languages, offering the alliance of the French nation to 



that Paris had interfered ; yet not unnatural that it stood even so, looking on 
in stupor. Paris is in death-panic, the enemy and gibbets at its door: whoso- 
ever in Paris hath the heart to front death, finds it more pressing to do so 
fighting the Prussians than fighting the killers of aristocrats." See, too, 
Stephens' Revolutionary Europe, 115. 



§338] THE CONVENTION. 347 

all peoples who wished to recover their liberties ; and French 
generals, entering a foreign country, were ordered "to abolish 
serfdom, nobility, and all monopolies and privileges, and to 
aid in setting up a new government upon principles of popular 
sovereignty." ^ 

Starving and ragged, but welcomed by the invaded peoples, 
the French armies sowed over Europe t*he seed of civil and 
political liberty. The Revolution was no longer merely 
French. It took on the intense zeal of a proselyting religion, 
and its principles were spread by fire and sword. 

O. The Convention: Revolutionary Government. 

338. The Republic declared : Execution of the King. — The 

new Convention had assembled September 21, 1792, The Con- 
stitutionalists had disappeared.^ The Girondist leaders n^w 
sat upon the Right and seemed to have the adherence of the 
Plain, and indeed of the whole Convention, except for a small 
party of the Mountain, where sat Robespierre, Danton, and 
Marat, with the rest of the deputies of Paris and the organ- 
izers of the Revolution of August 10. On the first afternoon,^ 
the Convention declared monarchy abolished, and enthusiasti- 
cally established '^ The French Republic, One and Indivisible." 
The Mountain was bent also upon punishing Louis. They 
were satisfied of his guilt, and they wished to make reconcilia- 
tion impossible. Said Danton: "The allied kings march 
against us. Let us hurl at their feet, as the gantlet of battle, 
the head of a king." Most of the Girondists wished to save 

1 The decrees are given by Anderson, No. 28. 

2 Note the progress of the Revolution: tlie old Royalists who made the 
Right of the First Assembly had no place in the Second ; while the Constitu- 
tionalists who made the Left of the First Assembly and the Right of the 
Second had vanished in the Third. 

3 Read Carlyle for an account of this first session of the Convention. The 
next day, September 22, the fall equinox, was afterward named the first 
day of the "Year One "of the new era. The new Calendar (cf. Carlyle or 
Stephens) may be presented as a special report. 



348 ' THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§339 

Louis' life, but they were intimidated by the mobs and the 
galleries ; and finally the Convention declared him guilty of 
"treason to the nation," and condemned him to death. He 
was executed January 21, 1793. 

339. The Constitution of the Year I. — Somewhat later, the new 

Republic secured the sanction of a written constitution, known as "the 
Constitution of the Year I." All adult males were declared equally 
sovereign and equally eligible to office. A one-chambered legislature was 
to be renewed annually, and its decrees were to be subject to veto by 
popular vote. The constitution ivas ratified by the vote of the French 
nation, but it never went into operation. It was suspended unconstitu- 
tionally, as soon as ratified, by a simple decree of the Convention declar- 
ing that, as France was in danger, the government must be revolutionary 
until the war was over. 

340. New EnemieSo Treason of Dumouriez. — The execution 
of the King was one factor in deciding England, Spain, Hol- 
land, Naples, and Portugal to join the allies against France, 
and it fatally offended many French patriots. Dumouriez, 
an able but unscrupulous general who had succeeded Lafayette 
as the chief military leader, tried to play traitor, in the spring 
of 1793, by surrendering Belgian fortresses to the Austrians 
and by leading his army to Paris to restore the monarchy. 
His troops, however, refused to follow him, and he fled to the 
enemy ; but Belgium was lost for a time, and once more the 
frontier was in danger. 

341. Ruin of the Girondists. — Ever since the Convention 
met, dissension had threatened between the Gironde majority 
and the Mountain (§ 338). The Girondists were men of 
theories and sentiment ; the Mountain were men of action. 
The Girondists wished a mild and enlightened government; 
the Mountain were determined to have a strong government. 
Some of the Mountain, moreover, were zealous for radical 
social changes, — the leveling of the rich, the abolition of 
poverty, and the destruction of all who stood in the way of 
sweeping reforms. For success, they depended upon the sup- 
port of the Paris mob. The Girondists abhorred such doc- 



§342] THE CONVENTION. 349 

trines and methods. They wished to remove the Convention 
from Paris, and they were accused of desiring to " federate " 
France, — to break up the '' Indivisible Republic " into a fed- 
eration of provinces. 

After the death of the King, the quarrel broke out fiercely, 
and the Girondists took the moment of foreign danger, in the 
spring of 1793, to press it to a head. They had been calling 
for the expulsion of Marat, and finally they ordered his trial, 
for complicity with the September massacres. Then in April 
they were mad enough to charge Danton with royalist conspir- 
acy. Danton, who was straining his mighty strength to send re- 
enforcements to the armies of France, pleaded at first for peace 
and union ; but, when this proved vain, he turned savagely 
upon his assailants. " You were right," he cried to the Moun- 
tain, who had pressed before for extreme measures against 
the Girondists, "■ and I was wrong. There is no peace possible 
with these men. Let it be war, then. They will not save the 
Republic with us. It shall be saved without them, saved in 
spite of them." And then, while the Assembly debated and 
resolved, the Mountain acted. It was weak in the Conven- 
tion, but it was supreme in the galleries and in the streets and 
above all in the Commune of Paris. The Commune, which 
had carried the Revolution of August 10 against the Legisla- 
tive Assembly, now planned another rising. June 2, 1793, 
armed forces marched against the Convention and held it 
prisoner until it passed a decree imprisoning thirty of the 
leading Girondists. Others of that party fled, and the Jacobin 
Mountain was left in power.'- 

342. The Committee of Public Safety : a Strong Executive. — 
Fugitive Girondists, however, roused the provinces against the 

1 The fate of the Girondists has aroused much sympathy ; but says John 
Morley (Essay on Robespierre), "The deliverance of a people beset by strong 
and implacable foes could not wait on mere good manners and fastidious sen- 
timents, when those comely things were in company with the most stupendous 
want of foresight ever shown by a political party." Certainly the victory of 
the Jacobins was the only means to save the Revolution with its priceless 
gain for humanity. 



350 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§342 

Jacobin capital. Armies were gathered at Marseilles, Bor- 
deaux, Caen, and Lyons. Lyons, the second city in France, 
even raised the white flag of the Bourbons and invited in the 
Austriaus.* Elsewhere, too, royalist revolt reared its head, 
and in Vendee^ the savage peasantry rose in wild rebellion 
for church and king. The great port of Toulon admitted an 
English fleet and army. Eor a time, it seemed as though 
Paris, with a score of central departments, must face the other 
three-fourths of France and united Europe. 

Out of this terrible danger was born a new government. For 
the first time since the States General met, France found a 
strong executive. This was a great Committee of Public Safety, 
which was to rule for over a year with despotic power. So far, 
in matters of government, the Eevolution had been tearing 
down ; it had been decentralizing and disorganizing. Now it 
was beginning to build up, to centralize and organize; and 
never has French genius in these lines shown itself with more 
triumphant vigor than in the months that followed. In the 
language of one of its members, the Convention was forced 
" fco establish the despotism of liberty, in order to crush the 
despotism of tyrants." The great Committee had been created 
by the Convention in April, after the treason of Dumouriez. 
Its twelve members, all chosen from the Mountain, were at 
first to hold office only for one month, but soon they came to 
retain their places without even the form of a reelection. Its 
original purpose had been mainly to hurry enlistments ; but, 
as perils thickened, after the Gironde revolt, the Convention 
put all authority into its hands. All other national committees 
and officers became its servants ; the Convention itself became 
its mouthpiece; and every petty municipal functionary in 
France was ordered to obey its decrees. This obedience was 
enforced through nearly a hundred "Deputies on Mission," 
who were sent out by the Convention to all departments, with 

1 Whereupon the Girondists in Lyons refused to fight longer, preferring 
death to alliance with the enemies of France. 

2 A province of old Brittany. 



§343] THE CONVENTION. 351 

absolute power, — subject only to the Committee, to which they 
were to report every ten days. They could replace civil 
authorities ; they could seize goods or money for national use ; 
they could imprison and condemn to death by their own tribu- 
nals.^ To prevent further treachery and to secure energy in 
military operations, " Deputies on Mission " were sent out also 
with each army of the Republic, with power even to arrest the 
general at the head of his troops. 

The Committee were not trained administrators, but they 
were men of practical business sagacity and of tremendous 
energy, — such men as a Revolution must finally toss to the 
top. In the war office, Carnot " organized victory " ; beside 
him, in the treasury, labored Oamhon, with his stern motto, 
" War to the manorhouse, peace to the hut " ; while a group 
of such men as Robespierre and St. Just sought to direct the 
Revolution so as to refashion France according to new ideals.''' 

343. Energy and Victory abroad. — Never has a despotism 
been more absolute or more efficient. In October, Lyons was 
captured, and ordered razed to the ground. A like fate befell 
Toulon, despite English aid. Other centers of revolt, paralyzed 
with fear, yielded. Order and union were restored; and a 
million of men, according to report, were sent to join the 
armies of France. Before the year closed, French soil was 
free from danger of invasion, and French armies had taken the 
offensive on all the frontiers. Serious peril from without was 
past until Napoleon's overthrow, twenty years later. 

" All France and whatsoever it contains of men and resources is put 
under requisition," said the Committee, in a stirring proclamation to the 
nation (August 23, 1793). ^ " The republic is one vast besieged city. . . . 
The young men shall go to battle ; it is their task to conquer ; the mar- 
ried men shall forge arms, transport baggage and artillery, provide 

1 On these great proconsuls of 1793 and 1794, read Stephens, II, 367-370, 
and Taine, III, 55-58. 

2 On the personnel of the Committee, read Stephens, II, 285, or Revolution- 
ary Europe, 133-135 ; and see a dramatic account of their meetings hy Morley 
in his " Robespierre " {Miscellanies, I, 67). 

3 The decree is given in full by Anderson. 



352 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§344 

subsistence ; the women shall work at soldiers' clothes, make tents, serve 
in the hospitals ; children shall scrape old linen into surgeon's lint ; the 
old men shall have themselves carried into public places, and there, by 
their words, excite the courage of the young and preach hatred to kings 
and unity for the Republic." 

" In this humor, then, since no other will serve," comments Carlyle, 
" will France rush against its enemies ; headlong, reckoning no cost, heed- 
ing no law but the supreme law. Salvation of the People. The weapons 
are all the iron there is in France ; the strength is that of all the men 
and women there are in France. . . . From all hamlets toward their 
departmental town, from all departmental towns toward the appointed 
camp, the Sons of Freedom shall march. Their banner is to bear ' The 
French People risen against Tyrants.' " 

Only Carlyle's words do justice to the result. "These soldiers have 
shoes of wood and pasteboard, or go booted in hay-ropes, in dead of 
winter. . . . What then? 'With steel and bread,' says the Conven- 
tion Representative, ' one may get to China.' The generals go fast to 
theguillotine, justly or unjustly. . . . Ill-success is death ; in victory alone 
is life. . . . All Girondism, Halfness, Compromise, is swept away. . . . 
Forward, ye soldiers of the Republic, captain and man ! Dash with your 
Gallic impetuosity on Austria, England, Prussia, Spain, Sardinia, Pitt, 
Coburg, York, and the Devil and the World ! 

" See accordingly on all frontiers, how the ' Sons of Night' astonished, 
after short triumph, do recoil ; the Sons of the Republic flying after 
them, with temper of cat-o-mountain or demon incarnate, which no Son 
of Night can withstand. . . . Spain which came bursting through the 
Pyrenees, rustling with Bourbon banners, and went conquering here and 
there for a season, falters at such welcome, draws itself in again, — too 
happy now were the Pyrenees impassable. Dugomier invades Spain by 
the eastern Pyrenees. General Mueller shall invade it by the western. 
' Shall,'' that is the word. Committee of Public Safety has said it. Rep- 
resentative Cavaignac, on mission there, must see it done. ' Impossible,' 
cries Mueller ; ' Infallible,' answers Cavaignac. 'The Committee is deaf 
on that side of its head,' answers Cavaignac. ' How many want'st thou 
of men, of horses, of cannon? Thou shalt have them. Conquerors, con- 
quered, or hanged, Forward we must.' Which things also, even as the 
Representative spake them, were done." 

344. The Reign of Terror at Home. — The Committee had not 
hesitated to use the most terrible means to secure union and 
implicit obedience. Early in September it adopted "Terror" 
as a deliberate policy. This " Long Terror " was a very differ- 



§344] THE CONVENTION. 353 

ent thing from the " Short Terror " of the mob, a year before. 
The Paris prisons were crowded again with " Suspects " ; and 
each day the Revolutionary tribunal, after farcical trials, sent 
batches of the condemned to the guillotine. Among the vic- 
tims were the Queen, many aristocrats, and also many Constitu- 
tionalists and Girondists — heroes of 1791 and 1792. In some 
of the revolted districts, too, submission was followed by 
horrible executions, and at JST antes the cruelty of Carrier, the 
Deputy on Mission, half -crazed with blood, inflicted upon the 
Revolution an indelible stain.^ In all, some fifteen thousand 
executions took place during the year of the Terror, — nearly 
three thousand of them in Paris. Over much of France, how- 
ever, the Terror was only a name. The rule of most of the 
great Deputies on Mission was bloodless and was ardently 
supported by the popular will. 

The temporary use of this terrible policy in parts of France 
had been made almost inevitable by the anarchy of the pre- 
ceding years and by the danger of foreign invasion. At all 
events, it was the weapon nearest at hand, and the Committee 
did not shrink from its use. It proved effectual. By the end 
of October, 1793, after only two months of the Terror, Paris was 
tranquil and had resumed its usual life.^ There were no more 
riots and almost no crime, even of the ordinary kind. France 
was again a mighty nation, united and orderly at home and 
victorious abroad.^ 

However, when all has been said in excuse and explanation, 
the Eeign of Terror remains a blot upon the history of man- 
kind. If it was begun to save France, it was continued for 

1 Special report: Carrier's "Noyades" and "Republican Marriages," 
which became so famous in literature. 

2 " Singular city," says Carlyle; " for overhead of all of this, there is the 
customary brewing and baking. Labor hammers and grinds. Frilled prome- 
naders saunter under the trees, white-muslin promenadresses, with green 
parasols, leaning on your arm. ... In this Paris, are twenty-three theaters 
nightly ; some count as many as sixty places of dancing." Cf. for similai 
ideas, Taiue, II, 188, and Stephens, II, 343-345. 

3 For a general verdict, read Stephens, II, 230. 



354 THE FRENCH EEVOLUTION. [§ 345 

party ends; and though the leaders were personally incor- 
ruptible and were animated, most of them, by lofty motives, 
the subordinate agents were unspeakably cruel and sordid. 

At the same time the crimes of the Terrorists do not stand by them- 
selves. They have attracted attention because of the class of society 
against which they were directed, John Morley, a cultivated and liberal 
English scholar, calls their deeds '■'■almost as horrible as the scenes an 
English army was to enact six years later in Ireland" (§551); and cer- 
tainly they were less terrible than the needless vengeance inflicted by 
the conservative government of Paris in 1871 upon twenty thousand vic- 
tims of the Commune (§ 436), — a matter of which the world hears very 
little. 

345. Constructive Work of the Convention. — The grim, silent, 
tense-browed men of the great Committee, working their eigh- 
teen hours out of every twenty-four, and carrying their lives 
in their hands, were doing more than organizing "terror" 
within and victory abroad. They were solving multitudes of 
vexing questions, left over from the preceding Assemblies, — 
cutting knots they could not loosen, and laying anew the foun- 
dations of society. In the midst of war and tumult, the Con- 
vention carried through much good work. It created and 
organized the splendid army with which Napoleon was to win 
his victories. It made provision for the public debt, adopted 
the beginning of a simple legal code, accepted the metric sys- 
tem for weights and measures, abolished slavery in the French 
colonies, instituted the first Normal School, the Polytechnic 
School of France, the Conservatory of France, the famous 
Institute of France, and the National Library, and planned 
also a comprehensive system of public instruction, the improve- 
ment of the hospitals and of the prisons, and the reform of 
youthful criminals. As Shailer Mathews says, " No govern- 
ment ever worked harder for the good of the masses " ; and 
says H. Morse Stephens {Yale Review, November, 1895, 
page 331): — 

It is probable that as the centuries pass, the political strife . . . may 
be forgotten, while the projects of Cambac^rfes and Merlin toward codifi- 



§346] THE CONVENTION. 355 

cation, the plans of Condorcet and Lakanal for a system of national edu- 
cation, and Argobast's repoi't on the new weights and measures, will be 
regarded as making great and important steps in the progress of the 
race. . . . The Convention laid the foiindations upon which Napoleon 
afterward built. In educational as in legal reform, the most important 
work was done during the Reign of Terror. . . . Their work was finally 
appropriated by Napoleon to his own glory. 

346. The Factions of the Jacobins and their Ruin. — In the 
spring of 1794, after some ten months' rule, the Committee of 
Safety began to encounter opposition.^ In the Convention, 
Danton, weary of bloodshed, had been urging that the policy 
of Terror was no longer necessary, and his friend Desmoulins 
had suggested a " Committee of Mercy." On the other hand, 
Hebert and the Paris Commune wished more radical measures. 
Hebert planned an atheistical republic, and proposed to substi- 
tute a Worship of Reason ^ for that of God. 

The great Committee proved strong enough to strike down 
both Danton and Hebert (March and April) ; and then for a 
few months, Robespierre, the best-known member of the Com- 
mittee, appeared to rule, sole master of France. He reopened 
churches in Paris, and, to offset Hebert's Festival of Reason, 
he made the Convention solemnly celebrate a " Festival to the 
Supreme Being." He seems to have hoped to refashion society 
with a strong hand and to create a new France with simple 
and austere manners.^ But, perhaps to clear the field of possi- 
ble opponents to his ideals, perhaps merely to remove personal 
rivals, Robespierre used his brief preeminence bloodily. The 
number of executions mounted with frightful rapidity. Then, 

1 Marat had been murdered by Charlotte Corday. The story may be pre- 
sented as a special report. 

2 In Paris, Hebert carried his point for a time. Religious exercises were 
forbidden, and in the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame a service was per- 
formed to Reason personified by a beautiful but dissolute woman seated on 
the altar. 

3 A decree of the Convention providing for public education read: " The 
transition of an oppressed nation to democracy is like the effort by which 
nature rose out of nothingness to existence. We must entirely refashion a 
people whom we wish to make free, — destroy its prejudices, alter its habits, 



356 THE FKENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 347 

in the last days of July (1794), the Convention rose against 
him and sent him and his adherents to the guillotine. The 
factions of the Jacobins had devoured one another. 

347. The Conservative Reaction. — In December, 1794, en- 
couraged by the reaction against the Radicals, the fugitive 
members of the Right once more appeared in the Assembly ; 
and in March, 1795, even the survivors of the Girondists were 
admitted. The Jacobins raised the populace of Paris in a 
desperate attempt to undo the reaction ; but the middle classes 
had rallied at last, and the mob was dispersed by troops and 
by organized bands of " gilded youth " from the bourgeoisie. 
The populace was disarmed, the National Guards were reorgan- 
ized, and there followed over France a " White Terror," wherein 
the conservative classes executed or assassinated many hun- 
dreds of the Jacobin party. ^ 

V. THIRD PERIOD, 1795-1799 : THE REPUBLIC UNDER 
THE DIRECTORY. 

348. The Constitution of the Year III. — The Constitution of 
the Year I was too democratic and provided too weak an 
executive for the new conditions ; and the reaction was con- 
firmed by a new constitution, known as the Constitution of the 

limit its necessities, root up its vices, purify its desires. Tlae state must 
tlierefore lay hold on every human being at his birth and direct his education 
with powerful hand." 

The most enthusiastic follower of Robespierre was St. Just ; and the frag- 
ments of St. Just's Institutes, with which he hoped to regenerate his country, 
express the ardent hopes of the Terrorists. Boys of seven were to be 
handed over to the " school of the nation," to be trained " to endiirg hardship 
and to speak little." Neither servants nor gold or silver vessels were to 
be permitted. As St. Just said elsewhere, he wished " to offer the nation the 
happiness of virtue, of moderation, of comfort, — the happiness that springs 
from the enjoyment of the necessary without the superfluous. The luxury of 
a cabin and of a field fertilized by your own hands, a cart, a thatched roof, — 
such is happiness." St. Just declared that he would blow his brains out if he 
did not believe it possible to remodel the French people along such lines. 

1 For further reading on Division IV, see page 341. This is a good place to 
stop for a careful review of the years 1789-1705. Topical outlines and " catch- 
word reviews " of the three Assemblies are suggested. 



§349] THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 357 

Year III (1795). The government established by this docu- 
ment is called " The Directory." . This was the name of the 
executive, which consisted of a committee of five, chosen by the 
legislature. The legislature consisted of two houses. Property 
qualification for voting was restored, with the use of electoral 
colleges; and the local governments were made subordinate to 
agents sent out by the Directory. The liberal principles of 
1791 were reasserted, — individual liberty, liberty of worship, 
freedom of the press, and jury trial. The constitution resem- 
bled that of 1791, except in three points : (1) the new executive 
was stronger than the old constitutional king of 1791 ; (2) the 
legislature had two houses, so as to check hasty legislation ; 
and (3) the administration was centralized.^ 

349. Insurrection against the Directory. — The constitution 
was submitted to a popular vote, but before the vote was 
taken, at the last moment, the expiring Convention added a 
peculiar provision. There seemed danger that a new legisla- 
ture might restore some form of monarchy ; and, dreading this 
result, the Convention decreed that two-thirds of its members 
should hold over as members of the new Assembly. This 
arrangement was submitted to the people, along with the con- 
stitution, and was practically made a condition to the latter's 
going into effect. It was carried by a small majority, while the 
constitution was ratified by an overwhelming vote. Indeed, 
the Convention was accused of falsifying the returns,^ to carry 
this special provision at all ; and, in any case, the interference 
with a full election was extremely unpopular. In Paris, where 
the opposition was strongest, the secret Royalists took advantage 
of the dissatisfaction to stir up a revolt against the Conven- 
tion. They were joined by twenty thousand National Guards, 
but their gallant attack was dispersed by four thousand regu- 
lar troops under the firm command of Kapoleon Bonaparte. 
This young officer in the service of the Convention mowed 



1 The constitution is given in Anderson's Constitutions and Documents. 

2 Cf. Borgeaud's Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions, 215, 216. 



358 THE FEENCH REVOLUTION. [§350 

down the attacking columns with grapeshot, and the rising 
was crushed. This was the ''affair of Vendemiaire." ^ The 
Directory was inaugurated quietly and remained in power over 
four years. 

350. The Military Situation in 1795 : French Gains before the 
Appearance of Napoleon. — In 1795, when the govermuent of the 
Convention was merged in the Directory, France had already 
made great gains of territory. On the northeast, Belgium had 
been annexed, in accordance with the vote of its people. Nice 
and Savoy, on the southeast, had been added, in like manner. 
The eastern frontier had been moved to the Rhine, by the 
seizure of all the territory of the Empire on the west side of 
the river. Holland had been conquered and converted into a 
dependent ally, as the " Batavian Republic," with a constitu- 
tion molded on that of France. Prussia, Spain, and most of 
the small states had withdrawn from the war. Only England, 
Austria, and Sardinia kept the iield. 

351. Napoleon Bonaparte in Italy. — The Directory deter- 
mined to attack Austria vigorously, both in Germany and 
Italy .^ Two splendid armies were sent into Germany, and a 
small, ill-supplied force in Italy was put under the command of 
Napoleon Bonaparte. The wonderful genius of the young 
general made the Italian campaign the decisive element in the 
war. By rapid movements, he separated the Austrian and 
Sardinian forces, beat the latter in five battles in eleven days, 
and forced Sardinia to conclude peace. Turning upon the 
gallant but deliberate Austrians, he won battle after battle, 
and by July he seemed master of Italy. Austria, however, 
clung stubbornly to her Italian provinces ; and, during the fol- 
lowing year, four fresh armies, each larger than Napoleon's, 
were sent in succession from the Rhine to the Po, only to meet 
destruction. In October, 1797, Austria agreed to accept Venice 
from Bonaparte, in exchange for Lombardy and Belgium, which 



1 The name of the French month. 

2 Austria at this time held a considerable part of North Italy. 



§353] THE EEPUBLIC UNDER THE DIRECTORY. 359 

she had lost ; and war on the continent closed with the Peace 
of Campo Formio. 

352. Effect of the Italian Campaign upon Italy. — Bonaparte's 
proclamation upon taking command of the Army of Italy had 
been significant of much that was to come : " Soldiers, you are 
starving and in rags. The government owes you much, but 
can do nothing for you. 1 will lead you into the most fruitful 
plains of the world. Teeming provinces, flourishing cities, 
will be in jovlt power. There you may reap honor and glory 
and wealth." 

To the Italians, Bonaparte posed at first as a deliverer ; and 
his large promises awoke the peninsula from the sleep of cen- 
turies to the hope of a new national life. This hope was to 
bear fruit in the next century, and something was accomplished 
at the time. Oligarchic Genoa became the Ligurian Bepuhlic, 
and the Po valley was made into the Cisalpine Republic. The 
French conquerors swept away feudalism and serfdom and the 
forms of the old Austrian despotism, and introduced civil 
equality and some appearance of political liberty. At the same 
time, however, with amazing perfidy, the independent state of 
Venice was goaded and tricked into war, seized by a French 
army, and afterward coolly bartered away to Austria.-^ Upon 
even the friendly states, Bonaparte levied enormous contribu- 
tions, to enrich his soldiers and officers, to fill the coffers of 
France, and to bribe the Directory. Works of art, too, and 
choice manuscripts were ravished from Italian libraries and 
galleries, and sent to Paris in vast quantities, to gratify French 
vanity ; and when the Italians rose against this spoliation, the 
revolts were stamped out with ferocious and deliberate cruelty. 

353. Bonaparte's Character and Aims. — Napoleon Bonaparte 
was born in Corsica in 1769. His parents were Italians, poor, 
but of noble descent. In the year of Napoleon's birth, Corsica 
became a possession of France. The boy passed through a 



1 Special report: Napoleon and Venice; see Rose's Napoleon I, 130-133, 
153-158. 



360 



THE TEENCH REVOLUTION. 



t§353 



FrencTi military school, and, when the Revolution began, he 
was a junior lieutenant of artillery.^ The war gave him oppor- 
tunity. He had distinguished himself at the capture of 
Toulon (§ § 342, 343) ; and, chancing to be in Paris at the time 
of the rising against the Directory in 1795, he had been called 
upon to defend the government. In reward, he was given, the 

next year, the command of 
the "Army of Italy. " Then 
followed the brilliant cam- 
paigns which called the at- 
tention of the world to the 
man who was to dominate 
European history for the 
next eighteen years. 

Bonaparte was one of the 
three or four supreme mili- 
tary geniuses of all history. 
He was also one of the 
greatest of civil rulers. He 
had profound insight, a mar- 
velous memory, and tireless 
energy. He was a " terrible 
worker," and his success 
was largely due to his won- 
derful grasp of masses of 
details, — so that he could 
recall the smallest features of geography where a campaign 
was to take place, or could name the man best suited for office 
in any one of a multitude of obscure tov^ns. He was not in- 
sensible to generous emotions ; but he was utterly unscrupulous 
and selfish, and he deliberately rejected all claims of moral- 
ity upon his conduct.^ Perfidy and cruelty, when they suited 




Napoleon at Arcola, in his Italian 
campaign ; after tlie painting by Gros. 



1 Special report: Napoleon's early dislike for France and his Corsican 
patriotism, illustrated by his career from 1789 to 1794. 

2 "Morality," said he, " has nothing to do with such a man as I am." To 
this it has been fitly rejoined, " Was he then above morality, or below it? " 



§355] BONAPARTE OVERTHROWS THE DIRECTORY. 361 

his ends, he used as calmly as appeals to honor and patriotism. 
In early life, Bonaparte seems to have been a sincere Eepub- 
lican ; but he hated anarchy and disorder, and, before his 
campaign in Italy was over, he had begun to plan to make 
himself ruler of France under some semi-republican form. 
He worked systematically and successfully to transform the 
army's earlier ardor for liberty into a new passion for military 
glory and plunder. He became the idol of the soldiery, and 
then used the military power to overthrow the civil authority. 

Before Campo Formio he had said to a friend, " Do you suppose I con- 
quer for the lawyers of the Directory ? . . . Do you think I mean to 
found a Republic ? What an idea 1 . . . The nation wants a head, a 
chief illustrious for great exploits ; it does not care for theories of govern- 
ment. . . . The French want glory. As for liberty, of that they have no 
conception. ... I am everything to the army. Let the Directory try to 
take my command from me, and they will see who is master." 

354. Bonaparte in Egypt. — The war with England con- 
tinued; and the next year (1798) Bonaparte persuaded the 
Directory to let him attack Egypt, as a step toward the con- 
quest of England's power in India. He won a series of bril- 
liant battles, but suddenly his fleet was annihilated by the 
English under Nehon, in the Battle of the Nile, and the gor- 
geous dreams of Oriental empire faded away. 

355. Bonaparte overthrows the Directory : Revolution of Bru- 
maire, 1799. — Then Bonaparte deserted his doomed army, 
and escaped to France. There his failure was not at first 
comprehended, and he found the nation ready to welcome him 
as a savior. War on the continent had been renewed. In 
1798 the Directory had brought about a change in the govern- 
ment of Switzerland and had organized that country as the 
Helvetic RepubliG (§ 513). They had also driven the Pope 
from Rome and dispossessed other Italian rulers, to make way 
for new republican states. The Great Powers of Europe were 
alarmed at these measures. England succeeded in drawing 
Russia and Austria into another coalition ; and so far, in the 
new war, the campaigns on the whole had not favored France. 



362 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [§ 355 

At home the French people were wearied, and anxious for 
peace ; and the Directory had proved incapable, corrupt, and 
despotic. According to the Constitution of 1795, one of the 
five Directors and one-fifth the Legislative Chambers were to 
be renewed each year, beginning in the spring of 1797. In the 
elections of that year, the Constitutional Monarchists had 
been so successful that the old Directors, fearing a restoration 
of the Bourbons, resorted to a coup d'etat.''- First making sure 
of leading generals of the army, including Bonaparte, they 
arrested fifty of the new members of the Legislature, and ban- 
ished them without trial to Cayenne, a French penal colony 
in South America. The following year (1798), there was 
almost equal danger of a Jacobin revival, and the Directory 
guarded against this by another coiqo d'etat, — declaring a large 
number of elections void, and itself filling the places with its 
own adherents. In 1799, for the third time in succession, the 
elections went against the existing government; and, though 
the Directory could keep control through the majority that held 
over, it was plain that the people were ready for its overthrow. 
It vyas plain, too, that this overthrow was coming through 
the array. Sieyes had just been chosen Director, and was 
already planning a new constitution to oust his colleagues. 
He expected to accomplish his purpose through some of the 
victorious generals of France ; but the sudden return of Napo- 
leon, the most available general, left him, not Sieyes, master 
of the situation. All hostile members of the Legislature were 
cleared from the hall by troops ; and a Eump, made up of Bo- 
naparte's adherents, abolished the Directory and elected Bona- 
parte, Sieyes, and one other as Consuls, intrusting to them the 
preparation of a new constitution. This was the Revolution of 



1 Literally, a " stroke of state." This is the name given In France to infrac- 
tions of the constitution by some part of the government through the use of 
force. Happily the thing itself has been so unknown to English history that 
the English language has to borrow the French name. The coming century 
was to see many a coup d'etat in France; and like phenomena have been 
common in other European countries. 



§356] THE CONSULATE. 363 

Brumaire} "Now," said the peasantry, "we siiall have peace, 
thanks to God and to Bonaparte " ; and by a rote of some 
three million to fifteen, hundred, the French people accepted 
the Constitution that virtually made Bonaparte dictator. 

No doubt the Frencli Republic would have become a military dictator- 
ship for a time, even though there had been no Bonaparte. The French 
were not ready for free government, and could not learn it all in eight 
years of constant war and turmoil. For a time they needed repose and a 
strong hand at the helm. Moreover, many men appear to have thought 
that in putting Bonaparte into power they were averting, in the only way 
possible, the overthrow of the Republic by the Royalists. And it is quite 
probable that if leadership had fallen to a general of more sincere repub- 
lican sentiments, — for instance to Moreau, Napoleon's chief rival, — then 
France might never have gone so far in reaction toward despotisin as 
she was to go. Napoleon did reestablish social and political institutions 
for France, as indeed any leader at that time must have tried to do ; but, 
to a wholly unnecessary degree, he built them upon despotic lines : he 
aimed from the first at hereditary monarchy ; he played upon the vain- 
glory of his people, and, after a short period of dizzy elevation, he brought 
vast calamities upon his country, besides deluging all Europe in blood. 

For Further Reading. — High school students will hardly get time 
to read upon the Directory, apart from Napoleon's career. For that, 
see the references on page 381. 

VI. THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE, 1799-1815. 
A. Peace and the Eeconstbuction of France. 

356. Marengo and Hohenlinden, i8oo. Peace of Amiens, 1802. 

— The campaign of 1800 dissolved the hostile coalition. 
Bonaparte in person won the great battle of Marengo over the 
Austrians in Italy, and General Moreau crushed another Aus- 
trian army in Bavaria at Hohenlinden. Austria and E-ussia 
made peace ; and Napoleon, anxious to impress the European 
rulers with a sense of his moderation, wisely allowed essen- 
tially the old terms of Campo Formio (§ 351). Then, in 1802, 

1 Anderson, No. 57, gives the decree. Special report: the story of 
Brumaire; see especially the admirable chapter in Rose's Napoleon I. 



364 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§357 

France and England laid aside their contest by the Treaty of 
Amiens, and, for a brief period, the world was free from war. 
Napoleon appeared both a conqueror, with dazzling victories, 
and also the restorer of the long-desired peace ; and the popu- 
larity of his government was established. 

357. The " Constitution of the Year VIII " (1800), which con- 
firmed the Ee volution of Brumaire, had been devised in its 
main outlines by Sieyes. The government was to rest on 
manhood suffrage, but that suffrage was to be refined by suc- 
cessive filtraUons. The adult males, some five million in all, 
were to choose one-tenth their number; the five hundred 
thousand " Communal Notables," so chosen, were in turn to 
choose one-tenth their number ; these fifty thousand " Depart- 
mental Notables " were to choose five thousand " National 
Notables." But all this voting Avas only to settle eligihility: 
the executive was to appoint communal officers at will out of the 
Communal Notables, departmental officers out of the Depart- 
mental Notables, and members of the legislature and other 
chief officers out of the National Notables. 

The legislature was to be broken up into four parts: a 
Council of State to prepare bills ; a Tribunate to discuss them, 
without right to vote ; a Legislative Chamber to accept or reject 
them, without right to discuss or amend; and a Senate, with 
power to veto. 

Sieyes had intended to break up the executive in like man- 
ner into one Consul for war, another for peace, and a "Grand 
Elector " who should appoint the consuls and other great offi- 
cials, but should then have no part in the government. Here 
Napoleon intervened. He was willing to accept the system of 
elections that never elected anybody, and a legislature that 
could not legislate, but he meant to have a real executive ; so 
he changed the shadowy "Grand Elector" into a First Consul, 
with all other parts of the constitution subject to his will. 
Bonaparte became First Consul. -His colleagues, as he put it, 
were "merely counsellors Avhom I am expected to consult, but 
whose advice I need not accept." Directly or indirectly, he 



§358] THE CONSULATE. 365 

himself filled all offices, and no law could even be proposed 
without his sanction.^ 

358. Local Administration ^ was again highly centralized. For 
each department, Napoleon appointed a Prefect, and for each 
subdistrict a Subprefect. These officers were intrusted with 
almost absolute power. They were free even from the local 
checks upon the Intendants of the Old Monarchy, since the 
E-evolution had cleared away the obstructing parlements and 
other local institutions.^ The despotic centralization of the 
Old Eegime was outdone. Even the forty thousand mayors of 
towns and villages were appointed by the First Consul or by 
his agents, and held office at his will ; " nor did there exist 
anywhere independent of him the authority to light or repair 
the streets of the meanest village in France." 

This new administration was vigorous and fearless ; and under Napo- 
leon's energy and genius, it did confer upon France great and rapid bene- 
fits. But, in the long run, the result was to be unspeakably disastrous. 
The chance for Frenchmen to train themselves at their own gates in the 
duties and responsibilities of freemen, by sharing in the local government, 
was lost ; and the willingness to depend upon an all-directing central 
power was fixed even more firmly than before in their minds. Through 
almost all the next century, the various national governments of France 
— imperial, monarchic, or republican — alike preserved this despotism in 
local government. Under such conditions, so far as real liberty was con- 
cerned, it mattered little whether the central government was called a 
monarchy or a republic. About the middle of the nineteenth century the 

1 For more precise details of the constitution, see Dickenson, Revolution and 
Reaction, 36-38, or Rose, I, 210-214. The document is given by Anderson. 

2 Rose, I, 24f)-249; Fyffe, I, 207, 208. 

8 In 1790, within a year of the meeting of the States General, Miraheau had 
written to the king, trying to reconcile him to the Revolution : " Is it nothing 
for the royal power to be without parlements, without pays d'etat, without a 
body of clergy, without a privileged class? . . . Several successive reigns of 
an absolute monarch would not have done so much for royal [centralized] 
authority, as this one year of Revolution." So Burke, in England, about the 
same time, foretold the coming military despotism and its centralized char- 
acter: " When the dictator appears, he will find that the legislation which has 
crushed and leveled all orders in the state, has greatly facilitated his career. 
... He will be able to construct the most completely absolute power that 
has ever appeared on earth." 



366 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§359 

French patriot, Tocqueville. despairingly confessed that, owing to the vice 
of centralization, all attempts to set up a free government in France had 
resulted at best in putting "a free head on servile shoulders " ; or, as the 
same statesman exclaimed at another time, "There is only one thing we 
can't create in France : that is a free government. And there is only one 
institution we can't destroy, and that is centralization." Even under the 
present Third Republic, this poison of centralization has been a serious 
drawback to the development of French liberty. Since about 1884, how- 
ever, great advance has been made in introducing self-go^^rnment in local 
units (§ 447); and in this reversal of Napoleon's work live the best hopes 
for France to-day. i 

359. Restoration of Order and Prosperity. — For a time, Bona- 
parte used his vast authority to restore order, to heal strife, 
and to reconcile all elements to the state. Royalist and Jaco- 
bin were welcomed to public employment and to favor; and a 
hundred and fifty thousand exiles, of the best blood and brain 
of France, returned, to reenforce the citizen body.^ In the 
public administration, corruption, extravagance, and inefficiency 
were replaced everywhere by order, precision, and symmetry. 
Education was organized. The church was reconciled to the 
state. Law was simplified ; and justice was made cheap and 
easy to secure. The material side of society was not neglected : 
the depreciated paper money was restored to a sound basis, 
and industry of all kinds was encouraged. Paris was made 
the most beautiful city of Europe, and it was endowed with 
an excellent water supply. The narrow streets were widened 
into magnificent boulevards; parks and public gardens were pro- 
vided; while here and there rose triumphal arches and columns ^ 

1 Cf . Ancient History, §§ 526-527. 

2 Extreme Royalists and early "Emigrants," who believed in absolute 
, mpnarchy and in the Old Regime, of course did not return. Those who were 

now restored to France were the liberal aristocrats and the clergy and Consti- 
tutionalists who had fled during the Reign of Terror. 

3 The Vendome column (see next page) was made from Russian and Austrian 
cannon captured in the Austerlitz campaign. The figures on the spirals repre- 
sent scenes in that campaign, and upon the summit, 142 feet high, stands a 
statue of Napoleon. The name Vendome comes from the name of the public 
square. The column was restored in 1875, from the fragments into which it 
had been broken by the Communards (§ 436). 



360] 



THE CONSULATE. 



367 



to commemorate French 
victories.^ Throughout 
the country, roads, canals, 
and harbors were built 
or improved. Political 
liberty was destroyed, but 
equality was |j?'eser?;e(i, 
along with the economic 
gains of the Revolution. 

The Eevolution had 
greatly improved the con- 
dition of the laborer. The 
peasantry were all land- 
owners, free from their 
old burdens ; and work- 
men secured two or three 
times the wages they had 
received ten years before. 
Under such conditions 
the people displayed new 
energies, and, with the 
establishment of quiet 
and order, they quickly 
built up a vast material 
prosperity. 

360. The Concordat and 
the Code. — Two of the 
reforms of the Consulate 
call for special attention.^ 

a. The Concordat. Re- 
ligion and patriotism were 
reconciled. For ten years 




The Vendome Column, Paris. 



1 Read Rose, I, 292, 293. 

2 If time can be spared for other Napoleonic institutions, special reports 
may be assigned upon the Legion of Honor, the University of France, and 
Napoleon's encouragement of science throughout his career. 



368 THE NAPOLEONIC EKA. [§361 

the condition of the church had been unsatisfactory and full 
of danger to religion and to France. Bonaparte at once freed 
the non-juring clergy from banishment and from prisons. But 
these priests had still neither churches nor support, while the 
established Constitutionalist clergy were not recognized by the 
Pope nor by the most devout Catholics. Bonaparte now forced 
the Pope to agree to a Concordat,^ which reconstituted the 
church. All bishops, non-juring and Constitutionalist alike, 
were requested to resign or were dismissed, and new ones, 
appointed by Napoleon, were consecrated by the Pope. Thus 
the church became Roman again ; but its property was not re- 
stored, and it was supported and strictly controlled by the state. 

6. The Code. Under the ancient monarchy, the contradic- 
tions and complexities of the legal system had called loudly 
for reform ; and the Revolution, with its new principles and 
its sweeping changes, had made the need of codification still 
more imperative. The work had been begun in 1793 (§ 345) ; 
and now the First Consul took up the task and carried it to 
completion with wonderful dispatch and success. A commis- 
sion of great jurists, working under Bonaparte's inspiration 
and oversight, reduced the. vast chaos of French legislation to 
a compact, simple, symmetrical code, known later as the Code 
Napoleon.'^ This code, embracing many of the most important 
principles of the Eevolution, was introduced during the next 
few years, by French control or influence, into Holland, Italy, 
Spain, and nearly all the German states except Austria and 
Prussia. Even these two countries imitated it for themselves, 
so that it became the basis of law for practically all Europe, 
except England, Eussia, and Turkey. Moreover, from Spain 
it spread to all Spanish America, and to-day it lies at the 
foundation of the law of the State of Louisiana. 

361. Napoleon's Share in the Reconstruction of France. — In 
all this reconstruction of France, the controlling and designing 

1 The name commonly given to a treaty between a pope and a temporal 
state. For brief accounts, see Rose, I, 249-262 ; Seeley, 99. 

2 Rose, I, 262-271 ; Fyffe, 173-175. 



I 



§362] 



THE EMPIEE. 



369 



mind was that of the First Consul. Functionaries worked as 
they had worked for no other master. Bonaparte knew how to 
set every man the right task ; and his own matchless activity 
(he sometimes worked twenty hours a day) made it possible 
for him to oversee countless designs. His penetrating intelli- 
gence seized^ the essential point of every problem, and his 
indomitable will drove through all obstacles to a quick and 




Arch of Triumph, Paris, commemorating Napoleon's victories.^ 

effective solution. His ardor, his ambition for France and for 
glory, his passion for good work, his contempt for difficulties, 
inspired every official, until, as one of them said, " the gigantic 
entered into our habits of thought." 

362. Despotism veiled by "Plebiscites." "Emperor of the 
French," 1804. — But after all, the great benefits that Napoleon 
conferred upon France were the work of a beneficent despotism, 
not of a free government. The First Consul worked as a 



1 Napoleon followed Roman models. Cf. Ancient History, ilO, ill. 



370 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§ 363 

Joseph II might have done (§ 280) had he possessed the ability 
and the opportunity. The Constitution of the Year VIII 
needed little change to accommodate it to avowed monarchy, 
and the slight forms of freedom in it were for the most part 
soon discarded.^ Even the Tribunate's right to discuss pro- 
posed laws was suppressed. In 1802, Bonaparte had himself 
elected Consul for Life. He set up a monarchic court and 
began to call himself by his first name — Napoleon — after 
the custom of monarchs. Then, in 1804, he secured a vote of 
the nation declaring him "Emperor of the French," and he 
solemnly crowned himself at Paris, with the presence and 
sanction of the Pope, as the successor of Charlemagne. 

Napoleon always claimed, it is true, that he ruled by the 
" will of the Erench people " ; and each assumption of power 
was given a show of ratification by a popular vote, or plebiscite. 
But the plebiscite was merely the nation's Yes or ISTo to a ques- 
tion framed by the master. The result of a negative answer 
could never be foreseen ; and it was not hard so to shape ques- 
tions that men would rather say Yes than risk the indefinite 
consequences of saying Ko. Tlie nation had no share at any 
stage in shaping the questions upon which it ivas to vote. Even if 
the result of the vote had not been largely affected by skillful 
coercion, the plebiscite would have been a poor substitute for 
representative legislatures and free discussion. It was but a 
thin veil for military despotism. It was, however, a standing 
denial of the old doctrine of " divine right." 

363. Personal Liberty vanishes. — Personal liberty was no 
longer safe. Napoleon maintained a vast network of secret 
police and spies ; and he sent thousands of men to prison or into 
exile by his sole decree. The press was subjected to stern and 
searching censorship.^ No book could be published if it con- 
tained opinions offensive to the Emperor, even in matters most 

1 For a detailed statement of the modifications made by the later con- 
stitutions, advanced students may consult a concise summary in Dickenson's 
Revolution and Reaction, 38-41. 

2 Read Dickenson, 46-48. 



§364] THE WARS OF THE EMPIRE. 371 

distantly related to politics.^ Newspapers were restricted in 
number, and, on pain of losing their licenses, they were for- 
bidden to print anything " contrary to the duties of subjects." 
They were required to omit all news " disadvantageous or dis- 
agreeable to Erance," and in political matters they were allowed 
to publish only such items as were furnished them by the gov- 
ernment. Moreover, they were required to praise the admin- 
istration. "Tell them," said Napoleon, "I shall judge them 
not only by the evil they say, but by the good they do not 
say." Even the schools were made to preach despotism, and 
were commanded to " take as the basis of their instruction 
fidelity to the Emperor." Religion, too, was pressed into ser- 
vice. Every village priest depended, directly or indirectly, 
upon Napoleon's will, and was expected to uphold his power. 
Indeed, a catechism was devised expressly to teach the duty 
of all good Christians to obey the Emperor.^ 

B. The Wars of the Empire. 

364. Renewal of War. — There is no doubt that Napoleon 
wished peace in 1800, to enable him to consolidate his power 
and reorganize France. It is equally clear that soon he again 
desired war. In 1802 he told his Council of State that he 
should welcome war and that he expected it. The existing 
peace, he said, and any that might follow, could be only a 
truce. In 1804 he declared that Europe needed a single head, 
an Emperor, to distribute the various kingdoms among lieu- 
tenants. He felt, too, that victories and military glory were 
needful to prevent the French nation from murmuring against 
his despotism. On the other hand, the other nations felt that 
there could be no lasting peace with Napoleon except on terms 
of absolute submission. Under such conditions as these, war 

1 Madame de Stael was not allowed to say that the drama of Iphigenia by 
the German Goethe was a greater play than the work of the French Racine 
upon the same plot. 

2 Read extracts in Anderson, No. 65, or in Dickenson, 54r-55. 



372 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§ 365 

soon broke out afresh. England and France renewed their 
strife in 1803, and between these Powers there was never 
again to be a truce until Napoleon's fall. During the next 
eleven years, Napoleon fought also three wars with Austria, 
two with Prussia, two with Eussia, a long war with Spain, and 
various minor conflicts. 

The European wars from 1792 to 1802 belong to the period 
of the French Revolution proper. Those from 1803 to 1815 
are Napoleonic wars, due primarily to the ambition of one 
great military genius. In the first series, Austria was the chief 
opponent of the Eevolution : in the second series, England was 
the relentless foe of Napoleon. 

365. Austerlitz, Jena, Peace of Tilsit (1805- 1807). — On 
the breaking out of war with England, Napoleon prepared a 
mighty flotilla and a magnificent army at Boulogne, and for 
over a year England was threatened with overwhelming inva- 
sion if she should lose command of the Channel even for a few 
hours. But all Napoleon's attempts to get together a fleet to 
compete with England failed ; and in 1805 Austria and Russia 
joined England in the war. With immediate decision, Napo- 
leon transferred his forces from the Channel to the Danube, 
annihilated two great armies, at Uhn and Austerlitz (October 
and December), and, entering Vienna as a conqueror, forced 
Austria to a humiliating peace. That country gave up her 
remaining territory in Italy, and her Illyrian provinces, and 
surrendered also many of her possessions in Germany. 

Prussia had maintained her neutrality for eleven years ; but 
now, with his hands free, Napoleon goaded her into war, 
crushed her absolutely at Jena (October, 1806), occupied Berlin, 
and soon afterward dictated a peace that reduced Prussia one- 
half in size and bound her to France as a vassal state. 

Less decisive conflicts with Eussia were followed by the 
Peace of Tilsit (July, 1807). The Russian and French Em- 
perors met in a long interview, and Tsar Alexander was so 
impressed by Napoleon's genius, that, from an enemy, he be- 
came a friend and ally. France, it was understood, was to rule 



§366] THE WARS OF THE EMPIRE. 373 

Western Europe ; Russia miglit aggrandize herself at the ex- 
pense of Sweden, Turkey, and Asia; and the two Powers were 
to unite in ruiiaing England by excluding her commerce from 
the continent (§ 366). 

366. The ''Continental System." — Meantime, England had 
proved as supreme on the seas as Napoleon on land. In 1805, 
at Trafalgar, off the coast of Spain, Nelson destroyed the last 
great fleet that Napoleon collected. Soon afterward, it is true, 
a secret article in the Treaty of Tilsit agreed that Denmark, 
then a considerable naval power, should be made to add her 
fleet to the Erench; but the English government struck first. 
It demanded the surrender of the Danish fleet into English 
hands until war should close, and finally it compelled the 
delivery by bombarding Copenhagen. 

After this. Napoleon could not strike at England with his 
armies, and he fell back upon an attempt to ruin her by crush- 
ing her commerce. All the ports of the continent were to be 
closed to her goods, and no intercourse was to be allowed with 
the island. This " Continental System " did inflict damage 
upon England, but it carried greater harm to the continent, 
which simply could not do without the manufactures of Eng- 
land, at that time the workshop of Europe.^ Smuggling became 
universal, and the System never worked successfully. In at- 
tempts to enforce it. Napoleon was led on from one high-handed 
measure to another, until Portugal and Russia rose against 
him (§ 367), and gave oppressed Central Europe another 
opportunity.^ 



1 At times, even the French armies had to be clothed in smuggled English 
goods, and they marched into Russia in English shoes. Napoleon stirred 
French scientists into desperate efforts to invent substitutes for the goods 
now shut out of the continent. One valuable result followed. The English 
cruisers prevented the importation of West India cane-sugar ; but it was dis- 
covered that sugar could be made from the beet, and the raising of the sugar- 
beet became a leading industry of France. 

2 England's retort to the Continental System was an attempt to blockade 
the coast of France and her dependencies to all neutral vessels. In these war 
measures, both France and England ignored the rights of neutral states ; and 



374 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§367 

367. Military Events from Tilsit to Wagram. The Peninsular 
War. — I'ortugal refused to confiscate the English vessels in her ports. 
Thereupon Napoleon's armies occupied the kingdom. Erom this act, 
Napoleon passed to the seizure of Spain, placing his brother Joseph upon 
the throne. But the proud and patriotic Spanish people rose in a " War 
for Liberation," and it was soon plain that a new force had appeared. 
Hitherto, Napoleon had warred against governments and regular armies, 
and had dictated peace when the capitals and rulers loere in his power : 
now, first, he had to fight with a people in arms. He found that brilliant 
victories merely transferred the outbreaks from one quarter to another 
and called for more and more of his energies. England seized her op- 
portunity, too, and sent an army under Wellesley (afterward Duke of 
Wellington) to support the Peninsular revolt. 

In 1809, encouraged by the Spanish rising, Austria once more entered 
the lists, but the defeat of Wagi'am forced her again to submission, i 
Eor the next two years, no opposition raised its head on the continent, 
except for the seemingly insignificant guerrilla war in Spain. This "Pen- 
insular War," however, continued to drain Napoleon's resources until 
the final expulsion of the French in 1813, after the Russian campaign 
(§ 373). Afterward, at St. Helena, Napoleon declared that it was really 
the Spanish war that worked his ruin. 

C. Napoleon's Eeconsteuction" of Europe. 

368. Territorial Rearrangements on the North Sea and in Italy. 

— At the moment, the campaigns of 1808-1809 seemed trivial. 
For five years after Tilsit, ISTapoleon was supreme in Central 
Europe. This period was marked by sweeping changes in 
territory, government, and society. Of course, many of the 
changes were designed in pure selfishness, merely to strengthen 
the supremacy of France ; but almost all of them were to 
result beneficially to Europe. In particular, the Germany 

the result was our War of 1812. Advanced students sliould read the magnifi- 
cent treatment of the Continental System by Captain Mahan in The Influence 
of the Sea Power upon the French Revolution (chs. xvii and xviii). 

^ Napoleon now married a princess of Austria. He was anxious for an 
heir, and so divorced his former wife, Josephine, who had borne liim no chil- 
dren, to make way for the new alliance with a granduiece of Marie Antoinette. 
This union of the Revolutionary Emperor with the proud Hapsburg house 
marks in some respects the summit of his power. 



§369] RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE. 375 

and Italy of to-day were made possible by ISTapoleon's vigorous 
clearing away of old institutions and by the impulse he gave 
to the new movements of political unity and of social reform. 
Outside of Germany, which requires special treatment (§ 369), 
the most important of the territorial changes may be grouped 
under three heads. 

a. The Batavian Republic was converted into the Kingdom 
of Holland, with Napoleon's brother Louis for its sovereign. 
Later, when Louis refused to ruin his people by enforcing the 
Continental System rigidly, Napoleon deposed him, and Hol- 
land, along with the whole north coast of Germany as far as 
Denmark, was annexed to France. 

b. In Italy the new republics and the old petty states were 
disposed of, one after another; even the Pope was deprived 
of his principality and, indeed, was made a French captive. 
When these changes were complete, Italy lay in three fairly 
equal divisions : in the south, Napoleon's brother, Joseph, 
ruled as King of Naples ; ^ in the northeast was the " Kingdom 
of Italy," with Napoleon himself as king ; and all the rest of 
the peninsula was a part of France, and was organized as a 
French department. 

c. The Illyrian provinces on the eastern coast of the Adri- 
atic were annexed directly to the French Empire. 

At the time, these changes added enormously to Napoleon's power, but 
at his fall, they were for the most part undone. For this reason they were 
less important than the changes wrought in Central Europe, which in the 
main were to survive. But to comprehend the significance of Napoleon's 
work in Germany, one must first grasp the bewildering conditions there 
before his interference (§ 369). 

369. Territorial Conditions in Germany before Napoleon. — Be- 
fore Napoleon there was no Germany. The Holy Roman 
Empire was made up of (1) two great states, Austria and 
Prussia, each of them half Slavonic in blood ; (2) some thirty 
states of the second rank, like Bavaria and Wurtemberg; 

1 When Joseph was promoted in 1809 to the throne of Spain, he was suc- 
ceeded in Naples by Marat, one of Napoleon's generals. 



376 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§ 369 

(3) about two hundred and fifty petty states of the third 
order, many of them ecclesiastical, — ranging in size from a 
small duchy to a large farm, but averaging a few thousand 
subjects.-^ Each of these states was an absolute monarchy, 
with its own laws, its own tariffs, its own mimic court, its own 
coinage, its own army,^ and its crowd of pedantic officials. 

Besides these three hundred states already mentioned, there 
were also about fifteen hundred " knights of the Empire." In 
England this class would have been country squires ; but in 
Germany they were virtually independent sovereigns, with an 
average territory of less than three square miles, ruling with 
power of life and death over half a million subjects, — some 
three hundred apiece. Each such state, too, had its tolls, its 
army, and its own system of taxation. And, lastly, there were 
some fifty " free cities," all in oligarchic decay and misrule. 

One more factor must be taken into account in order to get an idea of 
the indescribable confusion. Few even of these petty principalities had 
their territory compact. Many a state of the second or third order con- 
sisted of several fragments (obtained by accidents of marriage or war), 
sometimes widely scattered, — some of them perhaps wholly inside a 
larger state to which politically they had no relation. No map can do jus- 
tice to the quaint confusion of this region, about the size of Texas, thus 
broken into eighteen hundred governments varying from an Empire to a 
small estate, and scattered in fragments within fragments. The " Holy 
Roman Empire," as Voltaire said, "was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor 
yet an Empire." It is little wonder that the philosopher Lessing, the 
greatest German between Luther and Goethe, should have said : " Patriot- 
ism I do not understand ; at best it seems an amiable weakness which I 
am glad to be free from." 

The next seventy years were to see this "political crazy quilt" trans- 
formed into a mighty German state. The transformation was to be the 
work of German patriotic leaders, like Stein (§ 371) and Bismarck (§ 465), 
and of a new national enthusiasm in the German people, aroused by poets 
and statesmen ; but the work of the patriots, it is well to remember, was 
made possible by the preliminary work of the foreign despot. Napoleon. 

1 Eighty of these states averaged less than twelve square miles in area. 

2 The " Sovereign Count " of Leimburg-Styrum-AVilhelmsdorf maintained a 
standing army of one colonel, nine lower officers, and two privates. 



§371] EECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE. 377 

370. Territorial Consolidation of Germany. — At Campo 
Eormio (§ 351), Napoleon had begun his rearrangement of 
Germany : at that treaty, and by subsequent arrangements, 
prmces of the Empire were allowed to recompense themselves 
for the territories they had lost to France hy absorbing the 
ecclesiastical states and most of the free cities. After Austerlitz, 
Jena, and Wagram, more radical changes followed. Austria 
and Prussia were weakened. The first became an inland state. 
The second was halved and pushed altogether beyond the 
Elbe, while its recent Polish acquisitions were turned into the 
Duchy of Warsaw. After so depressing the two great states, 
Napoleon proceeded to form a further check upon them' by 
augmenting the states of the second rank. Bavaria, Saxony, 
and Wurtemberg were made kingdoms, with territories enlarged 
at the expense of Austria and of smaller neighboring states ; 
while out of old Prussian territory and of the electorate of 
Hanover was formed a new "Kingdom of Westphalia," for 
Napoleon's brother Jerome. 

At the same time the large states were encouraged or com- 
pelled to absorb the territories of the knights and of the petty 
principalities within or adjoining their borders. Thus eighteen 
hundred states ivere reduced to about forty / and this tremendous 
consolidation, surviving the rearrangements after Napoleon'^s fall, 
paved the way for later German unity. 

Nearly all these German states, too, except Austria and 
Prussia, were leagued in the "Confederation of the Phine," 
under Napoleon as " Protector." Of course the formation of 
this League amounted to a dissolution of the Holy Roman 
Empire ; and in 1806 Francis II laid down the venerable title. 
So closed a government that dated from Augustus Caesar. 
Two years before, Francis had assumed the title "Emperor 
of AiTstria," instead of his previous title, "Arch-Duke of 
Austria " ; but the new Austrian Empire must not be thought 
of as the successor of the Holy Poman Empire. 

371. Social Reform. — In the Confederacy of the Ehine and 
in the various kingdoms of Napoleon's brothers and generals, 



378 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§ 372 

serfdom and feudalism were abolished, and civil equality and 
the Code Napoleon were introduced. Everywhere, too, the 
administration of justice was made cheap and simple, and the 
old clumsy and corrupt methods of government gave way to 
order and efficiency. 

Most striking of all was the reform in Prussia. Elsewhere 
the new methods were introduced by French agents or under 
French influence. In Prussia they came from a Prussian 
minister, and were adopted in order to make Prussia strong 
enough to cast off the French yoke, Jena had proved that 
the old Prussian system was utterly rotten. The leading 
spirit in a new Prussian ministry was Stein, who labored to fit 
Prussia for leadership in freeing and regenerating Germany. 
The serfs were changed into free peasant-landowners; the 
caste distinctions ^ in society were broken down ; some self- 
government was granted to the towns ; and many of the best 
principles of the French reforms were adopted. Napoleon's 
insolence and the domination of French armies at last had 
forced part of Germany into the beginning of a new national 
patriotism ; and that patriotism began to arm itself by borrow- 
ing weapons from the arsenal of the French Eevolution. 

D. Fall of Napoleon. 

372. The Situation before the Russian Campaign. — In 1810, 

Napoleon's power had reached its widest limits. The huge 
bulk of France filled the space from the Ocean to the Ehine, 
— including not only the France which we know, but also 
Belgium, half of Switzerland, and large strips of German terri- 
tory, while from this central body two ou.tward-curving arms 
reached toward the east, — one along the North Sea to the 

1 In Prussia, the old law had recognized distinct classes, — peasants, bur- 
gesses and nobility, — and had practically forbidden an individual to pass from 
one class into another. Even the land had been bound by the caste system : 
no noble could sell land to the citizen of a town, or vice versa ; nor could a 
townsman sell to a peasant. All this wa,s now done away. Advanced students 
may consult Seeley's Stein, I, 291-294. 



§373J 



EALL OF NAPOLEON. 



379 



Danish Peninsula, and the other down the coast of Italy past 
Eome. Besides this vast territory, all organized in French 
departments, the rest of Italy and half the rest of Germany 
were under Napoleon's protection and were ruled by his 
appointees or favorites. 
Moreover, Denmark and 
Switzerland were his de- 
pendent allies, and Prussia 
and Austria were unwill- 
ing ones. Only the ex- 
tremities of the continent 
kept their independence. 
The islands of England, 
Sicily, and Sardinia and 
the rebels in the moun- 
tains of Portugal and Spain 
were in arms against him ; 
while Sweden and Russia 
were in alliance with him. 
And even these allies, 
though nominally equals, 
had, in fact, become mere 
upholders of his policy. 

373. Quarrel with Russia ; 
the Retreat from Moscow. 
— Eussia had been friendly 
since Tilsit, but was grow- 
ing hostile. Alexander was offended by the partial restoration 
of Poland (in the Duchy of Warsaw), and he believed that 
Napoleon had intrigued against Russian gains in Finland and 
in Turkey. The Continental System, too, was growing more 
and more burdensome, and in 1811 the Tsar refused to enforce 
it longer. Napoleon at once declared war. In 1812 he invaded 
Russia and penetrated to Moscow. The Russians set fire to 
the city, so that it should not afford him winter quarters ; but, 
with rare indecision, he stayed there five weeks, hoping in 




Napoleon toward the close of Ms rule. 



380 THE NAPOLEONIC ERA. [§ 374 

vain that the Tsar would offer to submit. Then, too late, in 
the middle of October, when the Russian winter was already 
upon them, the French began a terrible retreat, lighting des- 
perately each foot of the way against cold, starvation, and 
clouds of Cossack cavalry. Nine weeks later, twenty thou- 
sand miserable scarecrows recrossed the Niemen. The " Grand 
Army," a half-million strong, had left its bones strewn among 
Russian snows. 

374. From Leipzig to Paris. — The Russians kept up the pur- 
suit into Germany, and the enthusiasm of the Prussian people 
forced the government to declare against the oj)pressor. The 
next summer, Austria also took up arms. By tremendous 
efforts, Napoleon raised a new army of boys and old men from 
exhausted France, and for a time he kept the field victoriously 
in Germany ; but in October, 1813, he met crushing defeat at 
Leipzig, in the '' Battle of the Nations." He retreated across 
the Rhine, and his vassal kings fled from their states. Most 
of the small Powers of Central Europe now joined his enemies, 
but as yet there was no plan to dethrone him. England, 
Russia, Austria, and Prussia, acting in close concert through 
numerous congresses, took to themselves the name " The 
Allies," and maintained a perfect understanding. After Leip- 
zig, they proposed peace, offering to leave France the Rhine 
for her boundary. When this liberal proposal was rejected 
by the desperate gamester who opposed them, the Allies 
advanced to the Rhine, and offered peace with the French 
boundaries of 1792. Napoleon again refused. Then the 
Allies invaded France at several points, with overwhelming 
numbers, and, in spite of Napoleon's superb defense, they 
entered Paris victoriously in March, 1814. 

375. The Peace of 1 814. Louis XVIII. —The French Senate 
rejected Napoleon's offer to abdicate in favor of his young son, 
and decreed his immediate deposition. The Allies made him 
a large allowance, and granted him the island of Elba, in the 
Mediterranean, as an independent principality. France now 
had no government ; but the Bourbon heir, one of the Emi- 



§375] FALL OF NAPOLEON. 381 

grant brothers of Louis XVI, appeared, promised a constitu- 
tion, and was quietly recognized by the Senate as Louis XVIII. ^ 
The Allies had avoided the appearance of imposing this king 
upon France, but they were pleased with the arrangement ; 
and, to make it popular, they granted liberal terms of peace. 
France kept her territory of 1791, and received back nearly 
all her colonies. The Allies withdrew their armies without 
imposing any war indemnity, such as France had exacted 
repeatedly from other countries ; nor did they even take back 
the works of art that French armies had plundered from so 
many famous galleries in Europe. 

For Fctrther Reading. — The best brief accounts of the Napoleonic 
era are given in Stephens' B evolutionary Europe, 1789-1815, Rose's 
Bevolutionary and Napoleonic Era, and Fyffe's Modern Europe, 135- 
367. Andrews' Modern Europe has an excellent fifty-page treatment 
(I, 37-85), and Dickenson's Revolution and Beaction has a valuable 
chapter (ch. ii). The many histories of Napoleon are most of them 
defaced by extreme partisanship on one side or the other, or are too 
long for general use. Probably the best treatment is also the most re- 
cent, — Rose's Napoleon the First. Fournier's older but excellent Life 
of Napoleon has just been translated into English. Seeley's Short His- 
tory of Napoleon is exceedingly readable and forceful, but it is unjust to 
Napoleon. Campaigns are admirably dealt with in Ropes' The First Na- 
poleon, and that volume is also one of the best brief treatments of other 
phases of the time. Seeley's Life and Times of Stein gives a full and 
excellent account of Germany and Prussia in this age. Students who wish 
further details may consult works upon the separate countries. Ander- 
son's Constitutions and Documents gives an admirable selection of docu- 
ments. Kennan's Folk-tales About Napoleon is a curious and interesting 
volume. 



1 The son of Louis XVI had died in prison in Paris in 1795 ; according to 
the theory that he began to reign upon his father's death in 1793, he is known 
as Louis XVII. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. 

I. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA — REARRANGEMENTS. 

376. Call and Composition of the Congress. — Napoleon had 
wiped away the old map of Europe, and now, in turn, his 
territorial arrangements fell to pieces. All the districts 
which had been annexed to France since 1792, and all the 
states which had been created by Napoleon, were left with- 
out governments ; and the old rulers of these and other Euro- 
pean countries were clamoring for restoration of territories or 
for new acquisitions. To settle these problems, the four great 
Allies invited all the sovereigns of Europe to a Congress at 
Vienna, but by a secret treaty they reserved important ques- 
tions for their own decision. 

The Congress of Vienna assembled in November, 1814. The 
crowd of smaller monarchs and princes were entertained by 
their Austrian host in a constant round of masques and revels, 
while the great Allies did the work in committee. From time 
to time, as they reached agreements, they announced results 
to the Congress for public ratification. Before the work was 
concluded, however, Talleyrand, the French representative, 
forced his way into the inner circle, by taking adroit advan- 
tage of a quarrel among the Allies (§ 377 d). Thus the re- 
sults were really the work of England, Russia, Austria, 
Prussia, and France ; and the three men of most weight were 
Alexander of Russia, Talleyrand of France, and Metternich, 
the Austrian diplomat. 

377. The Political and Territorial Rearrangements of the Con- 
gress fall under four heads. 

382 



§377] THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 383 

a. The old German and Italian principalities were restored, 
under their former ruling families, except that no one thought 
of reestablishing the ecclesiastical states (other than the 
Pope's) or the petty German states below the second rank 
(§ 369). Italy was left in tivelve states^ and Germany in thirty- 
eight. These German states, moreover, were organized into a 
loose confederacy, under the presidency of Austria, for pro- 
tection against foreign attack (§ 387). 

h. Tlie states along the French frontier were strengthened. 
Holland was made into the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 
under the famous House of Orange, and to it was added Bel- 
gium, despite the fact that the Belgians wished to be inde- 
pendent. Switzerland received new French territory and was 
taken under the protection of the Powers, her neutrality being 
guaranteed.^ Nice and Savoy were given back to the King- 
dom of Sardinia, to which was added also the old Republic of 
Genoa. The old German territory west of the Rhine was 
given to Bavaria or Prussia. Thus aggression from France 
was guarded against by leaving no really weak state touching 
its borders. 

c. Denmark, the ally of France, tvas weakened ; and Sweden 
became a purely Scandinavian poiver, confined to the northern 
peninsula. Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden,^ 
in compensation for that country's loss of Finland to Russia 
and of Pomerania to Prussia. 

d. There remained the matter of compensation to the four 
Allies. England had stood out alone for years against the 

1 The Powers agreed, that is, that in time of war no state should send troops 
through Swiss territory or occupy any part of it. Switzerland was the one 
republic left in Europe, and its constitution was remodeled upon an oligarchic 
and ineffective basis, very inferior to that it had possessed as the Helvetic 
Republic. The ancient republics of Venice, Genoa, and Holland were none of 
them restored. 

2 The Norwegians resented the transfer, and tried to set up an independent 
government. The Powers ignored their wishes, however, and they had to be 
contented with a constitution approved by the King of Sweden, recognizing 
them in some respects as a distinct state with rights of their own (§ 523). 



38 i PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§378 

whole power of ISTapoleon, and she had incurred an enormous 
national debt by acting as paymaster of the various coali- 
tions. In some small repayment, she kept Malta, the Ionian 
Islands, Cape Colony, Ceylon, and a few other colonial acquisi- 
tions. Alexander of Russia claimed his reward in Poland: he 
insisted that the Duchy of Warsaw, with the Russian parts of 
Poland, should be made into a Kingdom of Poland, of which 
he should wear the crown. Austria and Prussia had both been 
enlarged after the beginning of the French Revolution, by the 
partitions of Poland. It was understood, now, that they were 
to be given territory enough to make them as large as they 
were after those partitions, but that they would not seek other 
extension. 

Austria was easily made content : she received back most 
of her provinces in Germany and Italy and on the Adriatic, 
and she accepted Venice in exchange for Belgium.^ But on 
the matter of the Russian and Prussian indemnity, serious 
difficulty arose. Prussia had expected her old territories, in- 
cluding the Duchy of Warsaw. Alexander's plan interfered 
with this ; and he finally won the support of the Prussian 
King by promising to aid Prussia in obtaining Saxony.^ 
Austria dreaded the approach of either Russia or Prussia 
toward the heart of Germany, and opposed the plan. Eng- 
land and France^ joined her, and the Allies came to the 
verge of war. Finally, however, it was arranged that Prussia 
should have half Saxony and the rest of her indemnity from 
German territory recovered from France west of the Rhine. 
Alexander secured his crown of Poland. 

378. The Congress interrupted by the Return of Napoleon. — I 
Suddenly the Congress was startled by the news that Napo- 

1 The Venetians bitterly resented the transfer, but their opinions were not 
regarded as in any way a matter of consideration. 

2 The King of Saxony had remained faithful to Napoleon, and so, Alexander 
urged, it would be proper to make an exception in his case to the careful re- 
spect shown by the conquerors toward all other " legitimate rulers." 

3 This was the occasion when Talleyrand made France a party to the real 
Powers in the Congress (§ 376) . 



§379] THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 885 

leon had left Elba. A few months of Bourbon rule had filled 
France with disquiet and dread. The tricolor, under which 
Frenchmen had marched in triumph into nearly every capital 
in Europe, had been replaced by the old white flag, and many 
ISTapoleonic officers had been dismissed from the army to make 
Avay for retunied Emigrants, who for twenty years had fought 
against France : thus the army was restless. The extreme 
Royalists were talking, too, of restoring the land of the 
church and of the Emigrants, though it had passed for a 
generation into other hands : and in consequence, the peasants 
and the middle class were rendered uneasy. Napoleon, learn- 
ing how matters stood, had landed in France, almost unat- 
tended. The forces sent to capture him joined his standard, 
and in a few days, without firing a shot, he entered Paris 
in triumph. The King and the old Emigrants emigrated 
again. Napoleon called upon a liberal statesman to draw 
up a free constitution ; France accepted it ; and Napoleon 
solemnly promised to respect it. The Allies at Vienna, 
however, refused even to treat with Napoleon. They declared 
unrelenting war upon him as "the disturber of the peace 
of Europe," and promptly moved powerful armies to the 
French frontier. 

379. Waterloo and the Second Treaty with France. — No time 
was given Napoleon for preparation. The Allies were ready, 
and the odds were overwhelming. After a brief rule, known 
as " The Hundred Days," Napoleon was crushed at Waterloo 
by the English under Wellington and the Prussians under 
Bliidier (June 18, 1815). The Allies reentered Paris, "bring- 
ing Louis XVIII in their baggage," as the French wits ex- 
pressed it. Napoleon was imprisoned on the distant volcanic 
rock of St. Helena; and to France was dictated a new treaty, 
much more severe than that of 1814. The Powers were 
alarmed at the ease with which the Bourbon monarchy had 
again been overthrown, and they wished to punish the nation 
for its voluntary acceptance of Napoleon. Prussia urged that 
France should be dismembered; as she herself had been after 



386 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§ 380 

Jena ; ^ but Alexander and England insisted upon a milder 
penalty. In the end, some small strips of territory were taken 
away, containing about a half-million of people, and a huge 
war indemnity was imposed, payable in five years. Meantime, 
France was required to receive and maintain a garrison from 
the troops of the Allies. This time, too, the works of art 
which Napoleon's armies had brought to France were restored 
to their proper homes. 

380. Closing Work of the Congress. — During the Hundred 
Days, the Congress of Vienna finished its work. Some of its 
later measures were highly praiseworthy. England induced 
most of the Powers to unite in an earnest declaration against 
the slave-trade, and the navigation of all the rivers of Western 
Europe which flowed through or between different countries 
was declared frfie.^ Moreover, it was worth much for Europe 
to recognize that it had common interests and that they could 
be arranged by a peaceful Congress. This was an advance 
from eighteenth century politics toward a better international 
organization. To be sure, the Congress of Vienna represented 
only governments, not peoples. But democracy was to come into 
control of the governments, and then it ivould have only to utilize 
this machinery. Thus even the gathering of despots at Vienna 
contained promise of the Hague Conference (§ 594), of inter- 
national tribunals, and of Tennyson's "federation of the 
World." 



1 Moderate Prussian statesmen demanded the cession to Germany of Alsace 
and Lorraine, — all the conquests made by France since the time of Louis XIV. 
These were essentially the terms imposed by Bismarck upon France, fifty years 
later, after the Franco-Prussian War (§ 434). Radical Prussian papers talked 
of breaking France up into Neustria, Aquitaine, etc., and even of killing off 
the French people " like mad dogs." 

2 A country in possession of the mouth of a river had been in the habit of 
closing it against the trade of other nations, to the serious disadvantage of 
countries on its upper course and of other commercial Powers. For instance, 
while Spain owned the mouth of the Mississippi (1783-1801), she had wished 
to follow this policy, — to the wrath of our western settlers on the river and 
its tributaries. The principle established at Vienna was a step forward for 
civilization. 



§380] THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. 387 

Of course, nothing of this was designed by the statesmen at 
Vienna. That " assemblage of princes and lackeys," in its 
desires, stood wholly for reaction. As Fyffe says, " It com- 
placently set to work to turn back the hands of time to the 
historic hour at which they stood when the Bastille fell." It 
ignored the peoples of Europe, — their wishes, rights, and 
interests. It considered only princes, and applied the phrase 
of "legitimacy" to consecrate the claims of ruling families 
against all popular movements. It even dismembered peo- 
ples among princes at will, to serve its own selfish purposes. 
The sentiment for national unity and independence had roused 
the peoples against Napoleon in Spain, Eussia, Germany, and 
Italy, and had wrought his overthrow. The Congress of 
Vienna, though reaping the result, ignored the cause ; and its 
work, therefore, had to be slowly undone through the next 
half-century. 

Still, even this selfish work contained many germs of prog- 
ress. Napoleon's consolidation of Germany was not undone. 
Austria had lost territory in Central Europe and gained it in 
Italy : thus the energies of this despotic Power were drawn, 
even more than before, away from Germany and into Italian 
and Danubian questions. Meantime, renovated Prussia, from 
whom now a true German union might be hoped, had lost Slav 
territory, hard to organize, and gained German districts. With 
her new Saxon lands, she reached down to the heart of Ger- 
many ; and with her distant isolated districts to defend, on the 
Ehine and the Niemen, she stood forth as the natural champion 
of German independence against both Slav and Gaul. In the 
next half-century, Prussia was to thrust Austria out of Germany 
and to organize the Eatherland into a grand empire under her 
own leadership. The possibility of this glorious result was 
one of the things hidden in the arrangements at Vienna. 

In like manner, the addition of Genoa to the Kingdom of 
Sardinia began the consolidation of Italy by absorption into 
Sardinia, — a process which was to reach completion, together 
with that for German unity, in 1870. 



388 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§ 381 

For Further Reading. — One or more of the following works should 
be consulted : Andrews' Modern Europe^ I, 90-118 ; Seignobos' Euroj^e 
since I8I4, 2-8 ; Phillips' Modern Europe, 1-13 ; Fyffe's Modern 
Europe, 368-418. Additional material will be found in Stephens' Bevo- 
lutionary Europe, Rose's Bevolutionary and Napoleonic Era, and 
Seeley's Life and Times of Stein. The most important documents are 
given in Anderson's Constitutions and Documents. 



II. ATTEMPTS TO MAINTAIN THE SYSTEM OF 1815. 
A. General Character of the Period, 1815-1848. 

381 . Reactionary Sentiment among the Restored Rulers. — The 

immediate result of tlie Congress of Vienna was a victory for 
reaction and despotism, over liberal thought and free govern- 
ment. In many states, especially in the pettier ones, the 
restoration of the old rulers was accompanied by ludicrous 
absurdities. The princes who had scampered away before the 
Prench eagles came back to show that they had "learned noth- 
ing and forgotten nothing." They set out to ignore the past 
twenty years. Even in France, a school history spoke of 
Austerlitz as " a victory gained by General Bonaparte, a lieu- 
tenant of the King " ! The Elector of Hesse restored the 
ancient uniforms and the wearing of queues by the soldiers, and 
censured his military Commandant for " omitting quai^terly 
reports during the preceding ten years," — in which the Elector 
had been a fugitive. The King of Sardinia restored serfdom. 
In the Papal States and in Spain, the Inquisition and other 
medieval institutions were restored. In some places Erench 
plants were uprooted from the botanical gardens and Erench 
material improvements were abolished, — from street-lamps to 
vaccination.^ 

382. Attitude of the Five "Great Powers." — The statesmen 
of the Great Powers must have smiled to themselves at some 
of these absurd extremes; but they, too, almost universally 

1 Andrew D. White gives an interesting account of a " Catechism of Re- 
action," in the American Historical Association Papers, IV, Part I, 69-92. 



§383] THE "SYSTEM" OF METTERNICH. 389 

strove to suppress all progress. Five states — Russia, Austria, 
Prussia, France, and England — really determined the policy 
of Europe. The first three were " divine right " monarchies. 
Russia had not been modified by any phase of the French Rev- 
olution. Prussia, with all her recent reforms, was an absolute 
despotism, dependent upon the whim of her king. Austria in 
the main was still medieval. And though the Tsar Alexander 
and Frederick William III of Prussia both played a little at 
liberalism, they were easily terrified by the bogie of " Revolu- 
tion," and were soon drawn to the Austrian policy. That 
policy from the close of the Vienna Congress was frankly 
reactionary. The Emperor Francis expressed it in an address 
to the professors of an Austrian college : " New ideas are 
being promulgated of which I can not and will not approve. 
Abide by the old. They are good ; our fathers prospered under 
them ; why should not we ? . . . I do not need wise men, 
but brave and obedient subjects." And while the government 
thought so to harness thought at home, it established rigid 
quarantine against ideas from abroad: students might not go 
abroad for study ; no foreign teachers were allowed to get 
places in Austria; and all printed matter was carefully super- 
vised. 

The western states, France and England, were at first not 
much better than these eastern Powers. Louis XVIII gave 
France a limited Charter, but the theory of divine right was 
carefully preserved until the Revolution of 1830 (§§ 411 ff.). 
That theory, of course, could have no place in England, where 
the monarchy rested on the Revolution of 1688; but even 
England for several years was to be in the hands of the Tory 
party, which was bitterly opposed to further progress (§ 529). 

383. The "Rule of Metternich."— The central figure in the 
period of reaction from 1815 to 1848 was the subtle Austrian 
statesman, Metternich. ISTo one has phrased the reactionary 
creed better than he : " Sovereigns alone are entitled to guide 
the destinies of their peoples, and they are responsible to none 
but God. . . . Government is no more a subject for debate 



390 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§384 

than religion is." Metternich was too shrewd to think it 
possible to return altogether to the days before the French 
Eevolution ; but he did strive to arrest all change at the lines 
the Congress of Vienna had drawn. The " new ideas " of 
democracy and equality and nationality ^ ought never to have 
been allowed to get into Europe, he said ; but, since they were 
in, the business of governments must be to keep them down 
out of sight. His policy has been aptly described as " Do 
nothing and let nothing be done." For over thirty years he 
was the evil genius of Europe. The rule of Napoleon, it is 
well said, was followed by the rule of Metternich. 

Metternich was a polished cynic and a master of intrigue. Napoleon 
said of him that he "mistook intrigue for statesmanship," and, again, 
that he "narrowly missed being a statesman"; and Stein complained 
that, though he had industry and ability, he was " overfond of complica- 
tions" and did not know how to do business "in the great and simple 
way." The one good thing to be said for his long rule is that it per- 
mitted no war between the Great Powers. The hundred years of almost 
incessant strife was fallowed, for the leading states of Europe, by forty 
years of almost unbroken peace. 

384. Disappointment of the Liberals. — The political reaction 
was the more galling to the friends of liberty because the Wars 
of Liberation in 1812-1814 had been essentially popular upris- 
ings. The Austrian and Prussian rulers had made repeated 
appeals to national patriotism, and had promised national 
unity and constitutional liberties. Austria and England had 
held out like hopes to the Italians ; ^ and the Spanish rebels 
had adopted a free constitution for their country (§ 393). Thus 
the Liberals of Europe had greeted Napoleon's overthrow with 

I The sentiment of nationality is the feeling among all the people of one 
race, speech, and country that they should make one political state, or become 
a "nation." This feeling tended to draw all Germans into a German state, 
and all Italians into an Italian state. It threatened Austrian supremacy, 
especially in Italy, because it made the Italian subjects of Austria wish to 
break away from Austria to join the rest of their fellow Italians. Thus in 
any conglomerate state, like Austria, the feeling of nationality was likely 
to be a disrupting force. 

2Cf. § 393; and read Andrews, I, 57, 114-116, and especially 185, 186. 



§385] DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE LIBEEALS. 391 

joyous acclaim ; but they soon came to see that Leipzig and 
Waterloo had done nothing toward freeing Europe. These 
victories simply " replaced one insolent giant by a swarm of 
swaggering pygmies." Only a few months after Waterloo, 
Byron ^ lamented that "the chain of banded nations has been 
broke in vain by the accord of raised-up millions"'; and, 
"standing on an Empire's Dust" at the scene of the great 
battle, and noting " how that red rain has made the harvest 
grow," he mused : — 

" Gaul may champ the bit and foam in fetters, 
But is Earth more free ? 
Did nations combat to make one submit, 
Or league to teacli all kings true sovereignty ? . . . 
Then o'er one fallen despot boast no more." 

385. Progressive Forces : Democracy and Nationality. — How- 
ever, underneath all the wave of reaction, the principles of the 
French E-evolution survived.^ The two positive forces in politics 
for the nineteenth century were to be Democracy and Nationality, 
— just the two principles ignored by the Congress of Vienna 
and warred upon by Metternich. The league of princes for a 
time compelled these forces to work underground, in secret 
societies and plots ; but before the middle of the century they 
emerged in three series of revolutions, — in 1820, 1830, and 
1848. In 1820, almost no gain was made, except, after some 
delay, in Portugal and Greece. In 1830, gains were confined 
for the most part to France and Belgium. But after 1848, — 
" the Year of Revolutions," — the system of Metternich lay in 
ruins. 

The work of the second half of the century was to reorganize 
Europe out of those ruins. Through the principles of Democ- 
racy and Nationality, there was created a new Germany, a 
new Italy, a new, stable French Republic, a new Swiss Fed- 
eral Republic, a democratic England, a constitutional, federal 

1 An English poet of strong liberal sympathies in politics. See § 399. 

2 There is an admirable statement of the permanent results of the Revolu- 
tion in Judson's Nineteenth Century, 64r-70. 



392 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§ 386 

Austria-Hungary, and a group of free Slav states in the 
Balkan peninsula. All these and the other small states of 
Europe in great measure remodeled their governments upon 
English or American forms. Eussia and Turkey remain the 
only two Powers in Europe not reconstructed ; and the latter 
of these has been nearly thrust back into Asia. 

386. Plan for the Treatment of the Period to 1848. — In our survey 
of the reactionary period to 1848 we are to note (1) Metternich's control 
over Germany througli the Germanic Confederacy ; and (2) his control 
over Soutliern Europe througli the concert of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. 
Tliese two topics are treated in subdivisions B and C, below. The revo- 
lutionary forces, which were to overthrow the "European system" of 
Metternich, emanated mainly from France, and will be referred to iipon 
occasion ; but tlieir systematic treatment will be left until a following 
chapter. 

B. Germany and Metternich. 

387. The Germanic Confederation. — The chief victory won by 
Metternich at the Congress of Vienna lay in the new organiza- 
tion adopted by Germany. Liberal Germany, represented by 
Stein, had hoped for a real union of the nation, either in the 
revival and strengthening of the Empire, or in a new federal 
state. But Metternich saw that in a true German Empire, 
Austria, with her Slav, Hungarian, and Italian interests, could 
not long keep the lead against Prussia. He preferred to leave 
the various states practically independent, so that Austria, the 
largest of all, might play them off against each other and so 
dominate them all. The small rulers, too, were hostile to a 
real union, because it would limit their sovereignties. In the 
settlement of the question, Metternich allied himself with 
these princes of the small states against Prussia and the 
Liberals. Stein was without official position ; the Prussian 
King and his ministers were mild-mannered and not very 
acute ; and the Prussian opportunity was lost. 

But some sort of alliance was necessary to guard against 
foreign invasion ; and the Federal Act of June 12, 1815, created 
the " Germanic Confederation." This union was q, Iqosq league. 



/; 



§388] GERMANY AND METTERNICH. 393 

and it was composed of sovereigns^ not of peoples. Each of the 
thirty eight states controlled its own government, its own 
army, its own tariffs, and its own foreign diplomacy, and they 
even kept the right to form alliances among themselves or 
with foreign powers, — although they did promise not to make 
war upon each other. The Confederacy did not even send 
ambassadors to foreign countries. It had no distinct execu- 
tive, judicial, and legislative departments: its one organ was 
the Federal Diet at Frankfort. This was merely a standing 
conference of ambassadors appointed by the sovereigns to 
speak their wills. The Austrian representative presided ; but 
no really important action could be taken without the consent 
of every state.^ Naturally, it was almost impossible to do 
business. Before many years the Diet was the laughingstock 
of Europe. As Dr. Judson says, "It was not a government at 
all ; it was a polite and cexeraonious way of doing nothing." 
The union amounted to little more than a possible means of 
securing concerted action by agreement among sovereigns ; and 
in practice this agreement was to be secured only for the pur- 
pose of repressing liberal movements. 

This Confederacy is the form in which Germany was organized from 
1815 until 1866, when Prussia thrust Austria out by war and began the 
present German state. The fact that the Confederacy lasted so long, how- 
ever, calls for no praise : it means only that for half a century there was 
little progress in national life. 

388. The Promised Constitutions in the German States. — The 

chance for making a German nation had been lost at the Con- 
gress of Vienna, but the Liberals still hoped, for a time, for 
free political institutions in the separate states. In the '' War 
of Liberation" the King of Prussia had twice promised his 
people a constitution ; and at the Congress of Vienna he had 

1 Thirty -four of the members were sovereign princes ; the other four were 
the governments of the surviving "free cities," Hamburg, Bremei;, Liibeek, 
aud Frankfort. 

2 Details of the Constitution are given in Pennsylvania Reprints, I, No. 3, 
Excellent analyses are given by Andrews, I, 232-238, and by Phillips, 38-44. 



394 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§ 388 

urged that the Federal Act should provide for setting up repre- 
sentative assemblies within a year in all the states and that 
these bodies should be given power over taxation. Metternich 
got this resolution softened into a vague and meaningless 
declaration that representative assemblies " would be " estab- 
lished. Ko time was stated, no powers enumerated; and it 
soon became plain that the pledge was worthless for most 
members of the Confederation. 

Within the next four years, it is true, constitutions were 
granted by the liberal Grand Duke of Weimar, and by the 
rulers of Nassau and of the four South German states, Wur- 
temberg, Bavaria, Baden, and Hesse-Darmstadt.^ These con- 
stitutions left the princes still the real rulers of their states ; 
but they provided for equality of all classes before the law, 
for freedom of the press, and for representative assemblies 
with control over new taxes. 

The King of Prussia might have put himself at the head of 
the movement and so rallied the liberal enthusiasm of Ger- 
many around his country. But Frederick William III was 
weak and vacillating, and when the first glow of patriotic 
sympathy was over, he began to see difficulties in the way of 
constitution making.^ He did appoint a committee to prepare 
a constitution; but that body dawdled along for four years 
without result, and finally Frederick William formally repudi- 
ated his promise. This last event happened after the intensi- 
fied reaction now to be described (§§ 389, 390). 

1 Germany south of the river Main is known as South Germany. The 
people in tliese districts had been greatly influenced by the French Revolution, 
and their rulers granted constitutions largely in order to secure popular sup- 
port against possible attempts of Austria or Prussia upon their sovereignty. 

2 Some of these difficulties were real. Prussia was a mass of heterogeneous 
provinces, — Polish, German, and Germanized Prussian (Slav). The east was 
Protestant and intensely conservative ; the new and distant western provinces 
were Catholic and zealously liberal. A third of the territory had just become 
Prussian for the first time, and large portions of the rest had been parts of 
other states for the preceding ten years. Moreover, the Prussian nobility 
railed bitterly at the thought of free institutions for the people, and the King's 
associations were chiefly with this nobility. 



§390] GERMANY AND METTERNICH. 395 

389. Liberal Indignation, Demonstrations, and Crimes : Reaction 
intensified. — By 1817, the Liberals ^ had become indignant and 
uneasy from the many delays and evasions by which in most 
states the promised constitutions were withheld. In October of 
that year, the three-hundredth anniversary of Luther's defi- 
ance of the Pope and the fourth anniversary of the Battle of 
Leipzig were celebrated together at the Wartburg castle in the 
Duchy of Weimar. The Jena University students took part 
in the celebration and turned it into a demonstration of liberal 
feeling. Patriotic and religious songs were sung ; ardent 
speeches were made ; and, in the evening, some old text-books 
were thrown into a bonfire, — having first been labeled with 
the names of reactionary works especially hated by the liberal 
party.^ 

This harmless and boyish ebullition threw sober statesmen 
into spasms of fear, and seemed to them to prelude a revolu- 
tionary "E-eign of Terror." Metternich took shrewd advan- 
tage of the opportunity to wean the King of Prussia from 
whatever remained of his earlier liberalism and to make him 
a satellite in the Austrian system of reaction. Unhappily, 
more serious weapons than the Wartburg Festival were soon 
put into the hands of the Reactionists. A small section of 
radical agitators preached that even assassination in the cause 
of liberty was right; and, in 1819, a fanatical student mur- 
dered Kotzebue, a Russian representative in Germany, because 
he was supposed to have drawn away the Tsar from liberal 
sympathies. Soon after, a like attempt was made upon an 
absolutist minister in Hesse. These crimes shut out all pros- 
pect of political progress for many years. 

390. The Carlsbad Decrees. — Austria at once called together 
the greater sovereigns of Germany to a conference at Carlsbad, 
and Metternich secured their approval for a series of resolu- 

1 Outside the Rhine districts the party was not large, but it comprised an 
influential body, — writers, journalists, students, professors, and most of the 
rest of the small educated middle class. 

a Read Andrews, I, 242-243, or Phillips, 54-55. 



396 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§ 391 

tions, which were then hastily forced through the Diet at 
Frankfort. For once, that body was coerced into prompt 
action by the urgent unanimity of the leading monarchs. 
The "Carlsbad Decrees," so adopted, were especially directed 
against free speech in the press and in the universities. They 
forbade secret societies among students ; they appointed a 
government official in every university to discharge any pro- 
fessor who should preach doctrines "hostile to the public 
order " ; they set up a rigid censorship of all printed matter ; 
and they created a standing committee to hunt out conspira- 
cies. These regulations broke in upon the sovereignty that 
had been promised the rulers over their respective states, and 
compelled some of the rulers to infringe constitutions they 
had just granted. A few of the small states protested, but 
the resolute attitude of Austria and Prussia forced them to 
yield or risk conquest. 

The decrees were renewed in 1824 and in 1833, and remained 
the law of the Confederacy, with little interruption, for nearly 
thirty years. During this time, thousands of enthusiastic 
youths were sent into exile or to prison for long terms, for 
singing forbidden patriotic songs, or for wearing the colors 
black, red, and orange, — the symbol of German unity. "Turn- 
vater Jahn," the organizer of the patriotic Turner societies in 
the time of Napoleon, and the poet Arndt, whose songs had 
done much to arouse the people against French rule, were both 
persecuted. Learned professors who would not consent to be 
completely muzzled were driven from the universities. Men 
ceased to talk politics in society, and left matters of govern- 
ment to princes. 

391. The Revolutions of 1830. — In 1830 the reaction was 
broken by a brief interruption. The " Second French Revolu- 
tion" (§ 412) drove out the reigning "divine right" monarch 
in France and set up a new monarchy resting upon popular 
authority. The success of the sudden rising was followed by 
revolts all over Europe, and for a time the European system 
seemed crumbling. Belgium broke away from the King of 



§3921 GERMANY AND METTERNICH. 397 

Holland, to whom the Congress of Vienna had given it. Poland 
rose against the Tsar, to whom the Congress had giv.en it. The 
states of Italy rose (§ 394) against Austria and the Austrian 
satellites, to whom the Congress had given them. And in 
Germany there were various uprisings in all absolutist states, 
to demand the constitutions which the Congress had not 
given. 

392. Reaction restored until 1848. — The final gains, however, 
were not so vast as at first they seemed. Belgium did become 
an independent monarchy with the most liberal constitution 
on the continent : and to that country and to France the Revo- 
lution brought permanent profit. But Tsar Nicholas crushed 
the Poles, took away their constitution,^ and made them a 
Russian province. Austria crushed the Italian revolts. And 
though four new constitutions appeared in small German 
states, after almost bloodless risings, still the general despotic 
character of the Confederacy was not modified. Wliile Austria 
was busied in Italy, it is true, there had seemed some hope of 
progress for Germany; but Metternich soon had his hands free, 
and at once he set about restoring "order." In 1832 an open- 
ing was given by a liberal demonstration at Hampach in Bava- 
ria. The meeting was as harmless as the Wartburg Festival 
of 1817 ; but it answered Metternich's purpose. Troops were 
marched to Hampach to put down the "insurrection," and the 
Diet was frightened into restoring the Carlsbad Decrees in an 
intensified form. 

Still, in the period from 1830 to 1848, reaction had lost much 
of its vigor and confidence, and it was being slowly under- 
mined by a quiet but growing public opinion. Metternich's 
genius sufficed to keep his system standing, as long as it was 
not disturbed from without ; but when the next year of Revo- 
lutions came (1848) that system fell forever in Western Europe. 
(See §§ 452-456.) 



1 Tsar Alexander had given a liberal constitution to his " Kingdom of 
Poland," but in 1825 Alexander was succeeded by Nicholas (§ 573). 



398 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§393 

C Eevolutions IN" Southern" Europe, and "Interven- 
tion" BY THE Despotic Monarchs. 

393. The Spanish Revolution of 1820. — The Spanish patriots 
■who rose in 1808 against Napoleon found themselves "without 
a government. Their king, with all their government machin- 
ery, was in the hands of the French. The insurgents set up 
a representative Cortes, and, in 1812, they adopted a liberal 
constitution. This " Constitution of 1812 " was far from per- 
fect ; indeed, it was modeled largely upon the French Constitu- 
tion of 1791 (§ 324) ; but it was the standard about which the 
Liberals of Southern Europe were to rally for a generation. 

After the fall of Napoleon, King Ferdinand returned to the 
Spanish throne. He had promised to maintain the new con- 
stitution ; but he soon broke his pledges, restored all the old 
iniquities, and cruelly persecuted the liberal heroes of the 
" War of Liberation." 

This condition lasted until 1820. In that year came a revo- 
lution. Troops had been collected to subdue the revolted 
American colonies ; ^ but the service was unpopular, and, in- 
stead of embarking, one of the regiments raised the standard 
of revolt and proclaimed the Constitution of 1812. Tumults 
followed in Madrid and other large towns; and the King, 
cowardly as he was treacherous, yielded, called a Cortes, and 
restored the Constitution. 

394. Other Revolutions of 1 820-1 821. — This success in Spain 
became the signal for like attempts in other states. Before 
the year closed, Portugal and Naples both forced their kings 
to grant constitutions modeled upon that of Spain ; and Sicily 

1 When Napoleon seized Spain, the Spanish American states refused to 
recognize his authority, and so became virtually independent under govern- 
ments of their own. At first, most of these new governments were in name 
loyal to the Spanish crown. During the next few years, however, the Spanish 
Americans experienced the benefits of freedom, and began to desire to emulate 
the example of the United States, which had so recently been merely a group 
of European colonies. Accordingly, by 1815, all the Spanish states on the 
continent of America had declared themselves independent nations. 



§395] EEVOLUTIONS OF 1820 IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. 399 

rose against the jS"eapolitan government for a constitution of 
its own. Early in the next year, the people and army of Pied- 
mont ^ rebelled, to secure a constitution for the Kingdom of 
Sardinia and to unite Italy ; Lombardy and Venetia, though 
held in the overpowering grasp of Austria, stirred restlessly ; 
and the Greeks began their long and heroic struggle for inde- 
pendence against Turkey. 

The wide-spread unanimity of action was due in part to 
secret revolutionary societies, already in existence. The most 
important of these was the Garhonari ("charcoal burners"). 
It had been formed in Italy, in the time of Napoleon, to drive 
out the French, and was continued there to drive out Austrian 
rule and to unite Italy. It was particularly strong among 
army officers, and it had branches or connections in other 
countries. 

395. The Congress of Troppau and the Alliance of the Three 
Eastern Despots against Revolution. — We have seen how Met- 
ternich used the Germanic Confederacy, designed for protec- 
tion against foreign attack, to stifle liberalism in Germany. 
We are now to observe how he adroitly twisted an alliance 
of monarchs from its original purpose in order to crush these 
revolutions in Southern Europe. 

After Waterloo, while the four " Allies " were still in Paris 
(November 20, 1815), they had agreed to preserve their union 
and to hold meetings from time to time. The purpose was to 
guard against any future aggression by France. But when the 
revolutions of 1820 began, Metternich invited France also to 
a Congress of the Great Powers at Troppau. The French 
King had been terrified by recent radical movements in France 
(§ 407), and these same events, together with the Wartburg 
affair and the murder of Kotzebue (§ 389), had made the Tsar 
and the King of Prussia pliable to Metternich's molding hand. 

1 Piedmont (" Foot of the Mount") was the district between the Alps and 
the plains of Lombardy. It was the most important part of the old Duchy of 
Savoy and of the later Kingdom of Sardinia. The name is often used for the 
whole state of Sardinia. 



400 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§ 39G 

At Troppau, the absolute sovereigns of Austria, Russia, and 
Prussia signed a declaration that they would intervene to put 
down revolution against any established government. Thus 
the principle of " intervention " was a proclamation that the 
*' divine right" monarchs would support each other against 
the nations : it was directed against the right of a people to 
throw off despotic rule and to make its government for itself. 
England protested against this doctrine, both before and after 
the meeting, and formulated in opposition to it the principle 
of " non-intervention," or the doctrine that each nation should 
manage its internal affairs as it chose. On this issue, the 
alliance of 1815 was broken up. Undaunted by England's 
protests, however, the united eastern despots, known popu- 
larly from this time as "the Holy Alliance,"^ prepared to 
enforce the Troppau program.^ 

396. The Congress of Laibach : Intervention in Naples and 
Sardinia. — A few months after Troppau, the three allied 
monarchs met again at Laibach. The King of Naples, another 
treacherous Bourbon Ferdinand, was present. That monarch 
had sworn solemnly to uphold the new Neapolitan constitution 
and had invoked the vengeance of Heaven upon his head if he 
should prove unfaithful ; but at the moment of these protesta- 

1 This name belongs strictly not to this outgrowth of the political alliance 
of November, 1815, but to a wholly different league organized two months 
earlier by the Tsar, under the influence of strong religious emotion. In Sep- 
tember, 1815, Alexander had presented to the monarchs a brief agreement 
whereby the signers would promise to govern their respective peoples as 
"branches of one Christian nation" in accordance with "the precepts of 
justice, charity, and peace." (The document is printed in the Pennsylva- 
nia Reprints, 1, No. 3.) No one took very seriously this " pious verbiage," 
as Metternich called it, except the Tsar himself and his friend Frederick 
William of Prussia ; but, from motives of courtesy, it was signed by every 
Christian ruler on the continent, except the Pope. This League called itself 
the Holy Alliance. Its name has come to be applied to that other league of 
the three eastern states, — so different in composition, origin, and purpose. 
No doubt the confusion was helped by the fact that the three despotic sover- 
eigns who signed the Troppau agreement were also the first three signers of 
the Holy Alliance. 

2 The document is given in Pennsylvania Reprints, I, No. 3. 



§398] INTERVENTION BY THE HOLY ALLIANCE. 401 

tions he was in secret correspondence with Metternich, and 
now he had come to Laibach for help to regain his absolutism. 
The Laibach meeting sent an Austrian army to Naples. The 
Neapolitan army was defeated; and Ferdinand returned, sur- 
rounded by Austrian bayonets, to glut liis vengeance upon the 
Liberals, with dungeon and scaffold. 

Three days after the Neapolitan defeat, came the revolt in 
Piedmont (March 10, 1821). If the two risings had been simul- 
taneous, there would have been at least some show of success. 
As it was, the "Congress of Laibach" promptly marched 
eighty thousand Austrians into North Italy, while one hundred 
thousand Eussians were held ready to support them ; and the 
Piedmontese were easily crushed. 

397. The Congress of Verona : Intervention in Spain. — Flushed 
with success, the Holy Alliance determined to overthrow 
also the Spanish constitution, from which the "contagion 
of liberty" had spread. In 1822 the Great Powers were 
summoned to a Congress at Verona. England again pro- 
tested vigorously ; ^ but France now joined the eastern Powers, 
and, with the sanction of the "crowned conspirators,"^ a 
French army restored the old absolutism in S|)ain. Then 
the Bourbon Ferdinand in Spain, like his namesake in Naples, 
busied himself for many months in a reactionary " Reign of 
Terror." 

398. Failure of Intervention in Spanish America. — The next 
wish of the Holy Alliance was to restore monarchic con- 
trol in the revolted Spanish colonies. But here they failed. 
England's protests they had been able to disregard as long as 
only the continent of Europe was concerned ; but on the sea 

1 The French representative tried to reconcile England by pleading that a 
constitution might he all very well in Spain, hut that it should be a constitu- 
tion granted by the King, not one forced upon him by rebels against his 
authority. Wellington, the English representative, Tory though he was, fitly 
answered this "divine right" plea: "Do you not know, sir, that it is not 
kings who make constitutions, but constitutions that make kings ? " 

2 Sydney Smith, an English Liberal, called the allied Powers at the Congress 
" the crowned conspirators of Verona." 



402 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§399 

England was supreme. The Allies could not reach America 
without her consent, and she made it known that she would 
oppose the intended expedition with all her great might. 
America shares in the credit of checking the despots. Canning, 
the English minister, urged the United States to join England 
in an alliance to protect Spanish America. The United States 
chose to act without formal alliance, but it did act along the 
sam^e lines. President Monroe's message to Congress in 1823 
announced to the world that this country would oppose any 
attempt of the despotic Powers to extend their "political 
system " to America.^ Probably the decided position of either 
England or the United States would have caused the Powers 
to abandon their project. Acting together, the two nations 
were certainly irresistible in the proposed field of combat, and 
the plan of the Holy Alliance was quietly dropped.^ 

399. Intervention in Greece, for Freedom. — Almost at once 
Metternich met another check, in the affairs of Greece. The 
rising there had been accompanied by terrible massacres of all 
Turks dwelling in the country, and the exasperated Turkish 
government was now putting down the rebellion by a war of 
extermination. For a time Metternich had hoped to bring 
about intervention by the allied Powers to restore Turkish 
authority quickly ; but he failed from two causes. 



1 This is one part of the famous Monroe Doctrine. 

2 When reproached afterward, in Parliament, for not having done more to 
preserve constitutionalism in Spain, Canning replied with the proud boast, 
" I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." 
It is possible to argue that both America and England acted from selfish 
motives, rather than from love of liberty. England wanted to keep her 
commerce with the free Spanish states; and the United States objected to 
the neighborhood of a strong Power that might interfere with her leadership 
or with her safety. There is no doubt, however, that, along with these proper 
though selfish motives, both countries were actuated also by principle and by 
sympathy with freedom, just as the Holy Alliance was moved by contrary 
principle. England had refused to listen to any offer securing her com- 
mercial advantages upon condition that she should in turn leave the Holy 
Alliance a free hand ; and the accusation against Canning and the tone of 
his reply are evidence of the real feeling of the English people. 



I 



§399] INTERVENTION BY THE HOLY ALLIANCE. 403 

a. The educated classes of western Europe had been nour- 
ished mainly on the ancient Greek literature, and now their 
imagination was fired by the thought that this struggle against 
the Turks was a contest akin to that ancient war against the 
Persians, which Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, and iEschylus 
had made glorious to them. The man who did most to widen this 
sympathy was Byron, the English poet. He closed a career of 
mingled genius and generosity and wrong-doing by a noble self- 
devotion, giving fortune and life to the Greek cause ; and his 
poems, invoking the magic of the old names of Marathon and 
Salamis, stirred Europe to passionate enthusiasm.^ Great num- 
bers of volunteers followed him to fight for Greek liberty, and 
before any government had taken action, the Turks complained, 
with some truth, that they had to fight all Europe. 

h. The Russian people, untouched by this western passion, 
still felt a deep sympathy for the Greeks as their co-religion- 
ists, and a deeper hatred for the Turks as their hereditary foes ; 
and so Metternich lost his chief ally. Eor though the Tsar 
at fi.rst discountenanced the Greek rising and even punished 
Russian officers who had encouraged it, still he was too much 
influenced by the feeling of his people to join in open inter- 
vention against the revolution. 

Einally, indeed, intervention came, but for the Greeks, not 
against them. The English, French, and Russian fleets had 
proceeded to Greece to enforce a truce, so as to permit negotia- 
tion. The three fleets were acting together under the lead of 
the English admiral, who happened to be the senior officer. 
Almost by chance, and chiefly through the excited feelings of 

1 This feeling is called Philhellenism. No schoolboy to-day can read the 
sad but stirring lyric, "The Isles of Greece," without quicker pulse-beat; but 
the European youth of Byron's time were moved more deeply than the pres- 
ent generation can easily understand by the allusions in such passages as 

this : — 

" Standing on the Persian s grave, 

I could not deem myself a slave" ; 

or this: " Ye have the letters Cadmus gave ; 

Think ye he meant them for a slave ! '* 



404 PERIOD OF REACTION, 1814-1848. [§ 400 

the sailors, they came into conflict with the Turkish fleet at 
Navarino (October, 1827) and annihilated it. The English 
commander had exceeded his instructions, but there could 
be no going back; the three Powers intervened to secure 
Greek independence, and Russian troops soon forced Turkey 
to grant it. 

400. The Holy Alliance and the Revolution of 1830 ; Renewal 
in 1833; Final Overthrow in 1848. — The French Revolution 
of 1830 dealt the next blow to Metternich's " European Sys- 
tem." France — her own government now resting on revohi- 
tion (§ 413) — was deflnitely lost to the Alliance, and joined 
England in protecting revolutionary Belgium against hostile 
intervention, so that Metternich called London and Paris "the 
two madhouses of Europe." Then the risings in Italy and 
Poland gave Austria and Russia each its hands full for many 
months. To be sure, these revolts were put down; but the 
despotic allies had not been able to hold Congresses and to 
act with united and overwhelming force, as in 1820. 

Metternich went to work again patiently, to build up his 
shattered system; and for a time, to some degree, he suc- 
ceeded. Soon, however, it became plain that his day was over. 
In 1833 a new Congress of the monarchs of Austria, Russia, 
and Prussia, at Mlinchengratz, renewed the pledge to unite in 
suppressing revolution ; but before there was occasion to put 
this agreement in force,^ the revolutions of 1848 shattered 
absolutism in Prussia and weakened it beyond recovery even 
in Austria (§§ 452 ff.). Russia, it is true, continued to act on the 
promise of Mlinchengratz, in assisting Austria to put down the 
Hungarian rebellion (§ 453), and, from that time to the present, 
she has shown a disposition to continue a like policy ; but never 



1 In 1847 a civil war broke out in Switzerland (§ 517) and the Mlinchengratz 
. Allies made some preparation to interfere. The French government, too, was 
just then reactionary in feeling (at the moment before its overthrow) and was 
ready to join the intervention. But England showed great firmness and 
seemed to threaten war, and in a few months came the 1848 revolutions all 
over Europe, preventing further action. 



§401] OVERTHROW OF METTERNICH'S SYSTEM. 405 

again lias there been a concert of European powers in tlie 
interests of despotism.^ 

401. Summary. — The System of Metternich and The Holy Alliance 
was triumphant at Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, over Sardinia, Naples, 
and Spain ; and, upon the whole, it remained victorious in Europe until 
1830. With reference to the South American continent it had been 
defeated by England and the United States ; and in 1830 it was weakened 
in Europe by the withdrawal of Erance. France and England then 
checked its plan to restore Belgium to the King of Holland. Metternich 
rebuilt the Alliance, in form, at Miinchengratz ; but the Revolution of 
1848 swept it away forever. 

Since that date, demands for intervention have usually come from the 
Liberals, in behalf of oppressed peoples. 

For Further Reading. — A number of valuable documents (referred 
to in footnotes above) are given in the Pennsylvania Beprints, I, No. 3. 
Good recent accounts of the rule of Metternich are given by Andrews, 
Modern Europe, 113-133 ; Seignobos, Eiwopie Since 1814, 374-389, 326, 
335, and especially 719-746 ; Phillips, Modern Europe, 37-134 ; and 
Fyffe, Modern Europe, 419-645. Special works upon Germany, Italy, 
and Spain may also be consulted. 



1 The nearest approach was the Congress of Berlin in 1878 (§ 547), when the 
Powers, led by the Tory government of England, gave back to Turkey some 
provinces which Russia had taken away. But plainly this was a political 
attempt to maintain Turkey as a balance to Russia: it was not despotic in 
purpose, and it would not have occurred if men had believed that the sur- 
rendered provinces could have maintained a real independence of their own. 



CHAPTER III. 

FRANCE SINCE 1815. 

L THE "DIVINE RIGHT" MONARCHY, 1815-1830.1 

A. The Charter. 

402. Theory and General Character. — Before the French Sen- 
ate proclaimed Louis XVIII (§ 375), it had drawn up a hasty 
constitution. Louis refused to accept it. Still, he recognized 
that France must have some written form of government,^ 
and in June, 1814, he promulgated a Charter. In form this 
was a free grant from the King, not a restriction forced upon 
him. Thus the theory of " Divine Eight " was not sacrificed.^ 
In other respects, however, the Charter closely resembled the 
rejected constitution, and for its day it was a liberal document. 
It gave to the French people more self-government than they 
had ever exercised in a regular way for any length of time, 
and more, too, than was to be found until 1830 in any other 
continental state. 

403. Provisions. — There were two Jioitses in the legislature. 
The House of Peers was to be appointed by the king, either for 

1 The student will observe that events in France during this period have 
been referred to in §§ 387-399. 

2 The experiences of the past twenty years and the uncertainty of the 
people as to the intention of the new government, made this particularly 
necessary in France. The people had shown that they would not necessarily 
object to a political master, but they were by no means ready for the restora- 
tion of the old privileged orders, and they wished to be sure of the titles to 
the old church lands. 

3 Read the preamble to the charter, in Pennsylvania Reprints, 1, No. 3, or 
in Anderson's Constitutions and Documerits, wliere the document is given 
entire. 

406 



mi 



§404] THE CHARTER OF 1814. 407 

life or with hereditary seats. The lower house {Chamber of 
Beputies) was to be elected and was to have full control over 
taxation. It was chosen, however, upon a high property quali- 
fication. To vote for a deputy, one must pay a direct tax of 
sixty dollars a year. This confined the franchise to less than 
one hundred thousand voters, in a population of nearly thirty 
millions. In other words, only one man out of about seventy 
could vote. Moreover, no one could be elected as deputy unless 
he paid a direct tax of about two hundred dollars.^ The mem- 
bers were to hold office for five years, and one fifth of them 
were to be renewed each year. The king retained an absolute 
veto, and also the sole right to introduce legislation. For civil 
liberty, the provisions were fairly satisfactory. The purchasers 
of the lands confiscated during the Kevolution were guaranteed 
titles. The principles of religious liberty, equality before the 
law, admission of all to public employment, free speech, and 
freedom of the press ^ were confirmed. On local government 
the Charter was silent ; but in practice the centralized system 
of Napoleon was retained : all prefects, subprefects, mayors, 
district and municipal councils, and bishops were appointed by 
the crown. 

B. First Period, 1815-1820. 

The Monarchy tries Constitutional Government. 

404. The Rage of the Ultra-royalists. — The Charter did not 
really go into effect until after the Hundred Days (§ 379) ; 
and the second restoration, after Waterloo, was followed by a 
bloody proscription of the Bonapartists and of the old Revo- 
lutionists, — in- the "White Terror" of 1815. In the midst 
of this fury of the returned Emigrants, the elections took place 
for the first Chamber of Deputies. The Eeactionists, taking 

1 This amount was so high that some districts hardly had enough eligible 
men to fill the places ; and so, of course, in such districts, the right of choice 
was practically annihilated. 

2 " Within the limits necessary to public tranquillity." This limitation 
was to be taken advantage of by the government in 1830 (§ 110). 



408 FKANCE SINCE 1815, [§405 

advantage of the panic into which the moderate and liberal 
parties were thrown, secured a large majority of the representa- 
tives, and they at once showed a determination to nullify the 
Charter. These " Ultra-royalists " were headed by the King's 
brother, the Count of Artois, the heir to the throne. They 
wished to restore the church lands and the lands of the Emi- 
grants, to hand education over to the church, and to wreak 
vengeance upon their old enemies. 

405. Louis sides with the Constitutionalists. — A new civil 
strife was averted only by the moderation of the King. Louis 
was wise enough, in a cynical way, to see the folly of his 
friends. He perceived that the Ultra majority was accidental 
and that it did not truly represent even the narrow body of 
electors; and in 1816 he dissolved the Chamber. The new 
election justified him, by giving a legislature of a more mod- 
erate character. For the next four years, the King continued 
to support the Liberals against the Ultras. France enjoyed 
order and tranquillity, and was prosperous and happy. 

406. Parties in the Assembly. — There were four groups in the 
Assembly. During the years 1816-1821, the Extreme-Eight (the Ultras) 
and the Extreme-Left (Radical Republicans) both desired revolution, 
though in opposite directions ; but they were both small in numbers. 
The bulk of the Assembly was divided between the Right-Center and the 
Left-Center. Both these parties were upholders of the Charter ; but 
while the first regarded it as a finality and were opposed to all further 
change, the second regarded it as a basis for future development. The 
King chose his ministers from one or the other of the two Center parties, 
usually from the Right-Center ; but the ministry governed by keeping 
up an alliance between the two moderate parties against the extremes in 
the two wings. 1 



1 This principle of government has held good through so much of the 
subsequent history of France that it is worth while for the student to try to 
grasp it. It differs radically, of course, from party government in England 
and America. Government in France has been carried on mainly by the 
Center, and when the Moderates there have failed to get on together, the 
government has commonly broken down before a joint attack from the two 
opposing extremes. 



§408] REACTION, 1820-1830. 409 

407. Louis frightened into the Arms of the Ultras. — By 1820 
the King was breaking in health and will, and the Ultras 
finally captured him by playing upon his fear of Revolution. 
The annual renewal of a fifth of the Chamber had increased 
the number of the Liberals. In 1818 Lafayette had appeared 
in the legislature ; and in 1819 more than half the new mem- 
bers were men who had served Napoleon or who had been 
active in the earlier Eevolutionary movements. The King, ter- 
rified by such conditions, began to seek support from the Ultras. 
Then the Radicals, discouraged or terrified, fell back upon secret 
plots. In 1820 the Uuke of Berry, the most promising nephew 
of Louis and the hope of the Royalists, was assassinated. This 
crime drove the King wholly into the arms of the Ultras.^ 

a Second Period, 1820-1830. 
The Monarchy tries Reaction. 

408. Reactionary Measures. — In 1824 Louis XVIII was suc- 
ceeded by his brother, the Count of Artois, with the title of 
Charles X ; and, for the whole period from 1820 to 1830, reaction 
held unbroken sway. The representative Chamber had become 
Ultra, partly through the natural popular reaction against the 
Radicals, partly through force and fraud at the polls on the 
part of the government. There followed a long series of re- 
actionary measures. Liberty of the press was curtailed ; the 
historical lectures of Guizot (§ 415) were closed; the gov- 
ernment joined the Holy Alliance at Verona (§ 397) in 
conspiring against constitutional liberty in Spain ; the *' Emi- 
grants " were given two hundred million dollars from the 
treasury, to compensate them for their losses in the Revo- 
lution; a law against sacrilege was enacted, with medieval 
features ; ^ a double vote in elections was given to the greater 

1 Cf. events in Germany (§ 389). The assassination strengthened the hands 
of Metternich at Troppau and Verona. Between 1821 and 1824 there were eight 
conspiracies of Revolutionists in France, followed by a number of executions. 

2 Read Andrews, I, 162. 



410 FEANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 409 

landowners, and electoral colleges were introduced to strengthen 
still further the influence of the higher aristocracy ; prefects 
and subprefects were dismissed in great numbers to make 
way for new appointees more in harmony with absolute rule ; 
and finally the sitting legislature lengthened its own life from 
five years to seven, abolishing, too, the annual renewal of a 
part of its number. . 

409. Defeats of the Ultras at the Polls. — The few Liberals 
in the Chamber annoyed Charles by their vigorous protests 
against these measures ; and in 1827 he dissolved the legisla- 
ture, expecting under the new laws to secure a still more sub- 
missive body. The issue was drawn clearly. Thiers, then a 
brilliant young journalist,^ preached the liberal constitutional 
theory in the words, " The king reigns, but does not govern," 
and he made repeated and significant references in his paper 
to the English Revolution of 1688 j while Charles announced 
that he regarded the legislature only as an advisory coun- 
cil, and that in case of a conflict of views his decision must 
control. 

The elections showed that the nation, and even the narrow 
body of voters, were earnestly opposed to the King's doctrine. 
The intellect of France and the influential part of the press 
were with the liberal party ; and, despite all court influence, 
the Liberals received a decisive majority at the polls. 

In a half-hearted way, Charles tried a more liberal govern- 
ment for a few months ; but he Avas not willing to go far enough 
to win the confidence of the legislature. Then, as clashes 
continued, he felt justified in falling back upon his older 
policy, and he called together a ministry of the Ultras. The 
Assembly answered his challenge by a bold address (March 2, 
1830), calling for the dismissal of the ministry, which it called 
*' a menace to public safety." The address was carried by a 
vote of 221 to 182. Charles at once dissolved the Chamber. 



1 Afterward a prominent statesman and later still a president of France 
{§§415, note, and 434 ff.). 



§411] THE REVOLUTION OF 1830. 411 

Public interest was intense,' and tlie aged Lafayette journeyed 
through. France to organize the Liberals for the contest. The 
new elections in June effaced tlie Ultra party in the Chamber : 
every deputy who had voted against the ministry was returned, 
and the Liberals gained also fifty of the remaining seats. 

D. The Eevolutiok of 1830. 

410. The "July Ordinances." — No whit daunted by the 
unanimity of the nation, the stubborn monarch prepared a 
coup d^etat? He looked upon the Charter merely as " a decla- 
ration of policy" on the part of the royal power, and he be- 
lieved that he had the right to modify or abolish it whenever 
such action might seem to him advisable.^ Accordingly, he 
now suspended the Constitution by a series of edicts, known 
in history as the " July Ordinances." 

These ordinances forbade the publication of newspapers with- 
out royal approval (a measure designed to prevent agitation 
against the rest of the changes), dissolved the new legislature 
(which had not yet met), promulgated a new law for elections 
(designed to make the court supreme at the polls), and called 
for new elections under this rule. 

411. The Protests of the Journalists and the Barricades of the 
Revolutionists. — The Ordinances were published July 26, 1830. 
Porty-one leading journalists of Paris at once signed and printed 
a protest, declaring the ordinances illegal, announcing their 

1 Tocqueville's Memoirs (1, 18) gives an interesting picture. Anderson gives 
the King's speeches to the Chamber and its Address. 

2 Slirewd observers liad foreseen it and its probable result. Even Metternich, 
while lamenting tlie free press and the representative system in France, had 
warned the French ambassador that an attempt now to do away with these 
"plague spots " would ruin the dynasty : " The men of lead," said he, " are 
on the side of the Constitution; Charles X should remember 1789." 

3 The preamble to the Ordinances (Anderson, No. 114) expresses this convic- 
tion, which was no doubt sincere. Some additional color for the King's action 
was found in Article 14 of the Charter, which declared that the Kiug might 
issue ordinances " necessary for the execution of the laws and for the safety 
of the state." 



412 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§412 

intention to resist, and calling upon France to do so. Copies 
of this paper were read eagerly by the disaffected classes of 
the city, and added to the public excitement. The journalists, 
however, seem to have had in mind only legal resistance, not 
violence ; but there were in Paris a few obscure Radicals who 
were ready to go further, and they were powerful in a crisis, 
because of their organization in secret societies. The same 
evening they decided upon armed revolt, and appointed " Com- 
mittees of Insurrection " for the various districts of the city. 
The next morning saw the streets thronged with angry crowds 
who threw up barricades out of paving stones, but who for 
the most part were still unarmed and were easily dispersed at 
any given point when troops arrived. That night, however, 
Lafayette reached Paris, to take charge of the revolt, and on 
the following morning the fighting began. 

412. The "July Days." — The 28th, 29th, and 30th are the 
" Three Days of July." On the 28th the crowd cried " Down 
with the ministry I " but, as their blood became heated with 
fighting, they came under the influence of the old Revolu- 
tionists, and began to shout " Down with the Bourbons ! " 
About four thousand men were slain in the three days. Out 
at the palace at St. Cloud, in the suburbs, the King hunted as 
usual ; and, on each evening, messengers from the sorely beset 
troops were kept waiting overnight, so as not to disturb the 
royal game of whist, while the scepter was slipping forever 
from the old line of French kings. Outside Paris, there ivas 
no fighting, hut the nation gladly accepted the Revolution when it 
had been accomplished. 

While the fighting was still going on, some thirty liberal 
Deputies of the legislature assembled at the Hotel de Ville 
and appointed a Provisional Government. The leaders at the 
barricades would have liked a republic, but they knew they 
had little support in the country. The Deputies and the Pro- 
visional Government wished, not a republic, but a change of 
dynasty. They decided to pass over the direct heir of Charles 
X, and give the crown to Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, a 



§413] CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY, 1830-1848. 413 

distant cousin of the King.^ Lafayette threw his influence 
for this policy, and his popularity won the crowd to it. Phi- 
lippe was made Lieutenant General, with the understanding 
that the office should be a step to the throne. 

For Fukther Reading. — Excellent accounts are given in Andrews, 
I, 134-189 ; Seignobos, 103-132 ; Fyffe, 427-446, 469-475, 603-619 ; and 
Dickenson, Bevolution and lieaction, 63-103. 



11. THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY, 1830-1848. 

413. Changes in the Charter. Election of Louis Philippe. — As 

soon as possible after the " Jnly Days," the legislature ^ 
assembled to regulate the government. It restored the tricolor 
as the national flag, modified the Charter in the direction of 
constitutional freedom, and then offered the crown to Louis 
Philippe, upon condition that he should first accept the 
amended Charter. The Revolution was then completed during 
1831 by the passage of a number of further reforms.^ 

The changes ia the Charter and these supplementary laws 
may be grouped together. The divine-right preamble to tlie 
Charter was cut out, as was also the king's power of issuing 
ordinances and the clause suggesting the possible need of 
limiting the freedom of the press (§ 403, note). The right 
to introduce bills was given to the legislature. The reaction- 
ary measures of the years 1820-1830 were repealed, including 
the " double vote" and the electoral colleges ; and a new elec- 
toral law extended the franchise to all who paid forty dollars 
in taxes. This doubled the voters, raising the number to nearly 
two hundred thousand. At the same time the number of those 

1 As a youth, Louis Philippe had taken the side of the First Revolution, and 
had fought gallantly in French armies until the excesses of the Revolution 
drove him into exile. Then, hy a happy chance, instead of joining the royalist 
Emigrants in their attempts against France, he had fled to England and the 
United States. 

2 This was the body which had been elected in June (§ 409) and which had 
been declared dissolved by the July Ordinances. 

8 See Anderson, for documents. 



414 FEANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 414 

eligible to seats in the legislature was increased by reducing 
the property qualification one-half. 

More significant than any of these details, however, was the 
new relation between the crown and the nation. The doctrine 
of divine right was still to find support from time to time in a 
small body in the legislature, but it was never again to control 
the government. Louis XVIII had ruled by hereditary title, 
and had given a charter to France. Louis Philippe, " King of 
the Barricades,'^ ruled by election, and a constitution was imposed 
upon him} 

414. Character of the " Orleans Monarchy." — The Orleans 
Monarchy, or the " July Monarchy," as it is sometimes 
called, lasted from 1830 to 1848. It rose out of a Revolution, 
and it fell before a more serious one. While it stood, it repre- 
sented the bourgeoisie, and was sustained by their favor.^ This 
was the class to which the King himself belonged in habits 
and character. Louis Philippe earned fairly his title of '' a 
bourgeois king " ; he walked the streets with a green cotton 
umbrella under his arm, and he sent his children to the public 
schools ; but he offended the taste of the aristocratic elements 
by his small economies and hoarding, and he was always offen- 
sive to the Radicals. 

415. The Conservative Ministry of Guizot. — The first ten 
years of the new reign (1830-1840) were disturbed by insur- 
rections and plots, and by incessant changes of ministry. 
During the remaining eight years, the government was admin- 
istered by Guizot. This statesman belonged to the new Right- 
Center, or the " party of resistance." ^ The period was one of 
rapid growth, and France needed peace and internal reform. 
The first need Guizot met : his ministry was the most stable 
government France had enjoyed since Napoleon's days; but 

1 The effect of the Revolution outside France has been referred to in § 391. 

2 The National Guards had been reorganized and were made up altogether 
of this class. 

3 Guizot was an eminent historian and had written a philosophic treatise upon 
the history of civilization. His leading opponent, Thiers (§ 409), was famous 



§416] CONSTITUTIONAL MONAECHY, 1830-1848. 415 

in his anxiety to secure tranquillity, lie opposed all change and 
all reform. 

Thus, after a few years, the intellect of France was driven 
into opposition, and even the selfish interests of the bour- 
geoisie suffered from the inaction of the government. Pro- 
posals were made in the legislature to reduce the salt tax, 
to extend education, to reform the postal system, to improve 
the prisons, to care for youthful criminals ; but all these ideas 
came from the liberal opposition and were quietly suppressed 
by the ministry.^ Said Lamartine in 1842, in an attack upon 
Guizot in the Chamber : " According to you, political genius 
consists in taking your stand on a position which chance has 
won for you, and remaining there immovable, inert, implacable 
to every reform. If this were true . . . there would be no 
need of statesmen ; a post would suffice." 

416. Narrow Electorate ; " Placemen " ; Corrupt Use of Patron- 
age. — Under such conditions the nation soon became indiffer- 
ent or hostile to Guizot ; but he intrenched himself so skillfully 
that he could hardly be overthrown by constitutional methods. 
Personally he was incorruptible, and even austere, but he ruled 
by corrupting others. He used the vast jjatronage of the gov- 
ernment to control the elections, and afterward to control the 
legislature. 

Two evil conditions made this possible : (1) the narrowness 
of the franchise ; and (2) the fact that members of the legisla- 
ture could become " placemen," or receive appointment to sal- 
aried offices.^ These evils were both increased by the fact that 



for brilliant works dealing with the French Revolution and with the Napole- 
onic era. Thiers represented the Left-Center, or the "party of action." 
Other prominent Liberals who joined the opposition were Tocqueville, the 
author of Democracy in America and of various treatises upon French history, 
and Lamartine, a poet and the historian of the Girondists. 

1 Guizot merits some praise, however, for beginning a system of primary 
schools for France. Of. § 449. 

2 As though in America the President could appoint Congressmen to lucra- 
tive positions as custom-house collectors or postmasters, — a proceeding which 
our constitution prohibits. 



416 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§417 

the government appointed all local officers,^ and therefore had 
a vast patronage at its disposal. Guizot organized this in- 
fluence for purposes of corruption. Less than two hundred 
thousand men had the right to vote, and large numbers of 
these were bought up by some of the three hundred thousand 
offices in the gift of the government. Then, when the elec- 
tions were over, the ministry strengthened its majority by 
appointing members of the legislature to important offices or 
by giving them profitable state contracts. At one time, it is 
said, half the members held lucrative positions at Guizot's 
will, and so gave their votes at his nod,^ 

417. Agitation for Political Reform. — The Liberals finally 
began to demand political reforms : (1) the extension of the fran- 
chise,^ and (2) the doing away with placemen. In the legisla- 
ture, Guizot successfully opposed both proposals. A new 
election took place in 1847, and the Liberals had high hopes of 
success ; but Guizot's tactics again secured his usual majority. 
Then the Liberals began to appeal to the thirty-nine fortieths 
of the nation who had no vote. They planned a series of mass 
meetings and demonstrations, to bring public opinion to bear 
upon the legislature. According to English or American 
ideas, the proceeding was perfectly proper ; but the French 
government believed it dangerous, and tried to prevent it. 
This action of the government brought on the Revolution of 
1848 ; but to understand the Revolution it is necessary to 
know something of another force which had been growing up 
almost unnoticed by political leaders (§ 418). 

418. Rise of Socialism. — The chief cause of the coming Rev- 
olution was the growth of Socialism in Paris among the work, 
ingmen. Through the preceding third of a century, wealth 



1 As though in America the President appointed state and county officers 
and mayors and chiefs of police. 

2 Tocqueville's Recollections, 38, 39, or Correspondence, I, 78. Read An- 
drews, I, 329. 

8 Tliey asked only to double the number of A'^oters. At the time not more 
than one adult male out of thirty-five or forty had the franchise. 



§419] THE KEVOLUTION OF 1848. 417 

had been increasing rapidly, but workingmen felt that they 
had not been getting their share. Certainly the distinction 
between capitalist and wage-earner had been growing sharper, 
and it was becoming more and more difficult to rise from the 
one class into the other. A number of remarkable writers 
had been so impressed by these facts that they attacked the 
whole existing organization of society. In general these 
" Socialists " taught that the state, not individuals, ought to 
own all capital, and to direct all labor, and to divide the prod- 
uct in some way that would give the working classes a larger 
share than they had been receiving. The writers and thinkers 
who led in these speculations were moved by sincere and pas- 
sionate pity for the masses, and were themselves high-minded, 
Unselfish idealists.-^ Among their followers there were many 
crack-brained enthusiasts, some criminal fanatics, and a large 
number of ignorant men easily inclined to violence. Large 
masses of Parisian workingmen had adopted phrases about the 
"■ right to labor " and the " crime of private property " as their 
creed. In the coming Eevolution, Socialism was to be revealed 
for the first time as a political force. 

For Further Beading. — See the works named on page 413. Tocque- 
ville's Becollections, too, is a most interesting volume for this period. 

Exercise. — Review §§ 381-399 and 402-418, so as to get a view of 
the period for France and the rest of Europe together. 



III. THE EEVOLUTION OF 1848 AND THE SECOND EEPUBLIC : 

1848-1852. 

419. The "February Days": Overthrow of the Orleans Mon- 
archy. — The Liberals had set February 22 ^ for a monster 

1 Among the French Socialists of the period were St. Simon, Fourier, and 
Louis Blanc. The last of these three was to play a prominent part in the 
coming Revolution. Various secret societies, like "The Society of the Friends 
of the People " and "The Society of the Rights of Man," were organized to 
propagate socialistic doctrines. For an example of criminal fanaticism, read 
Dickenson's Revolution and Reaction, 127. 

2 The date is said to have been chosen in honor of the American celebration. 



418 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 420 

political demonstration in Paris (§ 417). At the last moment 
the government forbade the meeting. The leaders obeyed, but 
the streets were filled all day with angry crowds shouting for the 
dismissal of the ministry. The National Guards, when called 
out to disperse the mob, themselves took up the cry. The next 
day, Guizot resigned. Peace seemed restored ; but that night 
a collision occurred between some regular troops and the mob ; 
and the Socialists and Radicals seized the chance to rouse the 
masses against the monarchy. By the morning of the 24th, 
the streets bristled with barricades and the mob was marching 
on the Tuileries. Louis Philippe abdicated, and, like Charles X, 
fled to England, His government had lost the support of the 
middle classes, and it simply collapsed.^ It remained to be 
seen what was to come from the victory of the Radicals. 

420. The Provisional Government : Composition. ■ — • The Cham- 
ber of Deputies was about to proclaim the infant grandson 
of Louis Philippe as king, under a regency, when the room 
was invaded by a howling mob, flourishing muskets and 
butcher-knives and calling for a republic. In the midst of 
this tumult the few dej)uties who kept their seats hastily 
appointed a committee as a " Provisional Govermnent." This 
body was at once escorted to the Hotel de Ville, where it found 
another provisional government already set up by the Radicals 
and Socialists. By a compromise, some of this latter body 
were incorporated in the first. The Provisional Government 
was now made up of three conflicting elements : Lamartine, 
the poet historian (§ 415 and note), represented the Moderate 
Republicans ; Ledru-Rollin was the representative of the 
Radical Republicans (" the Reds "), who wished to return to 
the '' Terror " of 1793 ; and Louis Blanc and the workingman 
Albert represented the Socialists. On the whole, the Pro- 
visional Government followed Lamartine and stood for order 
and property, but it was forced to concede much to the radical 
forces within and without. 

1 Read Tocqueville's Recollections, 114. 



§422] THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 419 

421. The Difficulties before the Government were tremendous. 
Eor sixty hours it was in the presence of an infuriated and 
drunken mob. This crowd of one hundred thousand armed 
men was packed into the streets about the Hotel de Ville, and 
self-appointed delegations from it repeatedly forced their way 
into the building to make wild demands uj)on the " govern- 
ment." That government must at once disperse this seething 
multitude, avert plunder and massacre, clear away barricades, 
bury the dead and care for the wounded, and supply food for 
the great city wherein all ordinary business had ceased. All 
this, too, had to be accomplished without any military or police 
assistance. 

Time after time, during the first long session, was Lamartine 
called from the room to check an invasion by some new band 
of Revolutionists. Said the spokesman of one of the bands : — 

We demand, the extermination of property and of capitalists, the instant 
establishment of community of goods, the proscription of the rich, the 
merchants, the bourgeoisie of every condition above that of wage-earners, 
. . . and finally the acceptance of the red flag, to signify to society its de- 
feat, to the people its victory, to all foreign governments invasion. 

Lamartine grew faint with exhaustion and want of food, 
but his fine courage and Avit and persuasive eloquence still 
Avon the victory over every " danger.^ To help appease the 
mob, however, the government hastily adopted a number of 
radical decrees, declaring a Eepublic, abolishing the House of 
Peers, establishing manhood suffrage, and affirming the duty 
of the state to give every man a chance to worTi? 

422. " National Workshops." — A few days later, the decree 
recognizing the " right to work " was given more specific mean- 
ing by the establishment of " national workshops " ^ for the 

1 Lord ISTormanby, the English Ambassador, says that in one of these en- 
counters Lamartine's face was scratched by a bayonet that was thrust at him, 

2 A number of these decrees are given by Anderson. 

3 The plan was in accordance with the teaching of Louis Blanc, and the un- 
willing majority of the government were coerced into joining in it by the mob. 
The government put the management, however, into the hands of a personal 



420 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§423 

unemployed. In the panic that followed the Eevolution, 
great numbers of men had been thrown out of work. The 
government now organized these men in Paris, as they 
applied, into a " workshop army," in brigades, companies, and 
squads, — paying full wages to all it could employ and a three- 
fourths wage to those obliged to remain idle. 

Over one hundred thousand men were finally enrolled iu 
this way ; but, except for a little work on the streets, the 
government had no employment ready for such a number. 
The experiment, of course, was not in any sense a fair trial of 
the socialistic idea. It Avas more of a police provision and a 
temporary poor-law. Por the moment, it did preserve order 
and distribute alms ; but it also gave a formidable organization 
to a terrible force with which the new Republic would soon 
have to reckon. 

423. The Constituent Assembly : Conflicts with the Socialists. — 
Twice in its ten weeks' rule, after the first disorders, the Pro- 
visional Government was attacked by the mob; but the middle 
class rallied to its support and enabled it to maintain order 
until it was replaced by a Constituent Assembly. The Assembly, 
elected by manhood suffrage, met May 4. The Revolution, 
like that of 1830, had been confined to Paris. The rest of 
France had not cared to interfere in behalf of Louis Philippe, 
but it felt no enthusiasm for a republic and it abhorred the 
"Ileds" and the Socialists. This, too, was the temper of the 
Assembly. It accepted the republic as inevitable, for the time 
at least ; but it was bent upon putting down the Radicals. As 
soon as this fact became evident, the mob rose once more 
(May 15), and burst into the legislative hall, holding possession 
for three turbulent hours.-^ At last, however, some middle- 
class battalions of the National Guard arrived, under Lamar- 



enemy of Blanc's, and it seems to have been their intention that the experi- 
ment should fail, so as to discredit Blanc with the populace. Cf . Ely's French 
and German Socialism, 113. Special report : Louis Blanc, life and character. 
1 Read Tocqueville's account in his Recollections, 156 ff., or Lamartine's in 
his Revolution of 1848, and Andrews, I, 354, 355. 



§424] THE SECOND REPUBLIC. 421 

tine's leadership, to sweep away the rabble and save the 
Assembly. 

The rescued Assembly promptly followed up its victory. 
After making military preparations, it issued a series of 
decrees, virtually abolishing the workshop army.^ Then the 
men of the national workshops rose. This time the Revolu- 
tionists were not a mere rabble : they comprised the great 
body of the workingmen of Paris, and they were aided by the 
semi-military organization of the " werkshop army." The 
Assembly made General Cavaignac dictator, and the conflict 
raged for four days, — the most terrible struggle that even 
turbulent Paris had ever witnessed. Probably not less than 
twenty thousand men perished ; but in the outcome, the supe- 
rior discipline and equipment of the troops and of the bour- 
geoisie National Guards crushed the Socialists for another 
generation.^ 

424. The Constitution of the " Second Republic " : Louis Napo- 
leon President. — The Assembly now turned to its work of 
making a constitution. The document was promulgated in 
November.^ It provided for a legislature of one house, and 
for a four-year president, both to be chosen by manhood 
franchise. A month later (December 10) Louis Napoleon, a 
nephew of ISTapoleon Bonaparte, was elected the first president 
by an overwhelming majority. 

Napoleon's political capital was his name. A group oflarilliant writers 
had created a "Napoleonic legend," representing the rule of the Eirst 
Napoleon as ai)eriod of glory and prosperity for France, broken only by 
wars forced upon Napoleon by the jealousy of other rulers. These ideas 
had become a blind faith for great masses in Prance. Louis Philippe, 
curiously enough, had added to their fervor by bringing home Napoleon's 
ashes from St. Helena for triumphant interment in Paris. 

1 A conservative French statesman has styled this legislation " a brutal, 
unjust, blundering end to a foolish experiment." 

2 Tocqueville's Recollections is especially good for the story of these " June 
Days " ; see, in particular, pages 187, 193, 212. 

«* It was not submitted to a popular vote. The document is given in Ander- 
son's Constitutions and Documents. 



422 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 425 

Louis Napoleon had long believed that he was destined to revive the 
rule of his family. Twice in the early years of Louis Philippe's reign he 
had tried to stir up a Napoleonic revolution.^ After the last of these 
fiascoes he had been imprisoned for some time, but he finally escaped to 
England and lived there quietly until the Revolution of 1818 called him 
back to France. To the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, alarmed as they 
were by the specter of " Red Republicanism" and Socialism, Napoleon's 
name seemed the symbol of order and peace. He received over five and 
a half million votes, to about one and a half million for Cavaignac, 
the stern Republican, and only eight thousand for Lamartine, shortly 
before the idol of French Liberalism. Rollin received three hundred 
and seventy thousand. 

IV. THE SECOND EMPIRE, 1852-1870. 

425. Preparation : Napoleon and the Assembly at Loggerheads. — 

Louis Napoleon had repeatedly pledged his faith to the Con- 
stitution, but he seems to have plotted from the first to over- 
throw it. The Assembly gave him opportunity. In 1849, 
there was a rising of the '' Reds," led by Ledru-Eollin. This 
event, together with rapid radical gains in Paris, terrified 
the Assembly into passing a reactionary suffrage law which 
virtually disfranchised a large part of the population.^ 

After the law had been passed, Napoleon criticised it vehe- 
mently, and so appeared to the artisan class as the champion 
of their constitutional rights, in opposition to a reactionary 
Assembly. At the same time, the discontent of the artisans 
made the bourgeoisie fear a revolution, and that class turned 
to Napoleon as the sole hope for order and stable government. 
Thus the chief elements in the state viewed with dread the 
approaching close of Napoleon's presidency. The constitution 
forbade a reelection ; and an attempt to amend it in this matter 
was defeated in the Assembly. Thus that body had now seri- 

1 Special report : the story of these efforts of Louis Napoleon, especially of 
the curious attempt at Boulogne. 

2 Tocqueville says it took tlie franchise from about three men out of ten. 
{Correspondence, I, 100, 259). Read the statement in Fyffe, 811', 812, or in 
Andrews, II, 22. 



§426] THE SECOND EMPIRE, 1852-1870. 423 

ously offended both tlie artisan class and the bourgeoisie, and 
Napoleon could overthrow it with impunity. 

426. The Coup d'Etat. — In semi-royal progresses through 
France,^ Napoleon had been preparing the nation for his blow. 
He found fault with the Assembly freely, and his speeches were 
filled with references to the "glory" of the former French 
Empire, and to the benefits conferred upon France by "my 
great uncle." Meantime the important offices in the army and 
in the government were put into the hands of his tools and his 
trusted friends, and on December 2, 1851, he carried out the 
most striking coup d'etat in all French history. 

During the preceding night nearly eighty men whose oppo- 
sition was especially feared — journalists, generals, and leaders 
in the Assembly — were jjrivately arrested and imprisoned ; 
and all the printing offices in the city were seized by Napo- 
leon's troops. In the morning the amazed people found the 
city posted with startling placards announcing the dissolution 
of the Assembly, proposing a new government with Napoleon 
at its head, and promising an appeal to the nation for ratifica- 
tion.^ The Assembly tried to declare Napoleon deposed, but 
it was dispersed by soldiers, and most of the members were 
imprisoned. During the next few days a few Radicals began 
to raise barricades here and there in the streets, but these were 
carried by the soldiers with pitiless slaughter, and the conflict 
was made an excuse for a "reign of terror." Batches of 
prisoners, taken at the barricades, were shot down after sur- 
render ; the most dangerous districts of France were put under 
martial law ; and thousands of men were transported to penal 
settlements, virtually withont trial.^ 

Under these conditions, a few days later, the country was 
invited to vote Yes or No upon a new constitution making 
Napoleon President for Ten Years with dictatorial power. 
France " ratified " this proposal by a vote of seven and a half 

1 Read Andrews, II, 23, 24. 

2 See Anderson, for the proclamation. 

3 See Seignobos, 171, for precise figures; or Andrews, II, 36, 37. 



424 



FRANCE SINCE 1815. 



[§427 



million out of eight million.* In November of the next year, 
a still more unanimous vote sanctioned a second step in the 
usurpation, and made the daring adventurer Emperor of the 

French, under the title Na- 
poleon III.^ 

427. The Constitution. 
Character of the Empire and 
the Periods of its History. — 
The Second Empire vs^as 
modeled closely upon that 
of Napoleon I. The people 
elected a Legislative Cham- 
ber (a greater popular power 
than existed under the First 
Empire) ; but the Emperor 
appointed a Senate and 
a Council of State (with 
powers like those of the 
corresponding bodies under 
Napoleon I), while he kept 
in his hands the sole right 
to introduce laws. Moreover, of his own will, he filled all 
offices, made treaties, and declared war.^ 




Napoleon III. 



1 This unanimity was due in large measure to the government's shame- 
less interference at the polls: the army was voted first, for an example; 
and in many places the rural population was marched to the polls, virtually 
under military authority. Such measures, however, were not necessary to 
secure a large majority. Apart from them, France threw itself into Napo- 
leon's arms, with only a small body of Liberals and of Socialists in Paris to 
oppose him. There can be no doubt that the vast majority of the people 
were content to give to a master a power almost equal to that of a Tsar. 
Tocqueville gives a valuable contemporary account of the coxip d'etat in a 
Letter to the London Times, reprinted in his Remains, II, 173-189. Victor 
Hugo, who fought at the barricades, tells the story in his History of a Crime. 

2 The Bonapartists counted the son of Napoleon I as Napoleon II, although 
he never reigned. 

3 Seignobos, 171-173; Dickenson's Revolution and iJeaciion, 228-229; and 
Andrews, II, 151-153. The Constitution is given by Anderson. 



§428] THE SECOND EMPIRE, 1852-1870. 425 

Napoleon's methods had been those of a conspirator, and his 
rule ignored real political liberty ; but he was not a mere self- 
ish adventurer. He desired to benefit France, and he honestly 
regarded himself as "a democratic chief." His government, 
he insisted, rested upon manhood suffrage, in elections and 
plebiscites. The Restoration (1815-1830), he said, was the 
government of the great landowners ; the Orleans Monarchy 
was the government of the bourgeoisie; the Empire was the 
government of the people. He seems really to have wished to 
introduce liberal features into the workings of the Constitution, 
as fast as he could safely do so.^ Unfortunately, he could find 
tools only among second-rate men, often more despotic in 
temper than their master; and the actual administration was 
exceedingly tyrannical. 

The Empire lasted from 1852 to 1870, just about as long as the Orleans 
Monarchy. This period falls into two divisions. During the first eight 
years (1852-1860) the government was successful abroad and despotic 
at home. During the next ten years (1860-1870) it encountered a series of 
humiliations abroad and it grew more and more liberal at home. Then, 
in 1870, it was overthrown in the Franco-Prussian War, and replaced by 
the Third Republic (§§ 433 ff.). 

428. The Despotic Period, 1 852-1860 During the first years 

of the Empire, political life was suspended. The elections, at 
best, could not have greatly affected the government ; but the 
government did effectually control elections. It presented for 
every elective position an " official candidate," for whom the 
way was made easy. Opposing candidates could not hold 
public meetings, nor hire the distribution of circulars, while 
they were seriously hampered even in the use of the mails, 
and their placards were torn down by the police or indus- 
triously covered by the official bill-poster for the government 
candidate. Moreover, the ballot boxes were supervised by 

1 Advanced students will find a good summary of Napoleon's ideas in 
Andrews, II, 146-151, or in Dickenson's Revolution and Reaction, 223-228. 
For the liberal modifications of the constitution after 1860, see Dickenson, 
230-231. 



426 



FEANCE SINCE 1815. 



[§428 



the police, and, no doubt, were sometimes "stuffed." The 
government subsidized a large number of newspapers, and it 
suppressed, on slightest pretext, all that were unfavorable 
to it.i 

In private life, prominent men lived in an atmosphere of 
espionage and corruption. Their servants were likely to be the 
paid spies of the police. Personal liberty was wholly at the 
mercy of the government. Under the "Law of Public Secu- 
rity " (1858), the government 
could legally send "suspects," 
withouttrial, to.linger through 
a slow death in tropical penal 
colonies,- as it had been doing 
illegally before ; and many 
thousands are said to have 
perished in this way.' 

Upon the passage of this law, 
an order was sent to each prefect 
to arrest a fixed number of men 
in his department, using his own 
clioice in selecting them. The 
number varied from twenty to 
forty, according to the character of 
the department. That is, the total 
arrests under this order must have 
exceeded two thousand. The pur- 
pose seems to have been merely to 
intimidate the nation. 




"France is Tranquil." — A cartoon 
from Harper's Magazine, represent- 
ing France under Napoleon III. 



In partial recompense for this loss of liberty, the Empire 
gave to France great material and economic progress. In- 
dustry was encouraged ; Paris and other leading cities were 
rebuilt upon a more magnificent scale; asylums and hospitals 



1 For anecdotes, read Seignobos, 174-175. 

2 See Tocqueville's Correspondence, II, 195-197. A striking story illustrat- 
ing the administration of the law is given by Dickenson, 234, 235, and others 
are given in Senior's Conversations, 1, 90 and 160-161. See also, for the tyranny 
of this period, Tocqueville's Remains, II, 186. 



§429] THE SECOND EMPIRE, 1852-1870. 427 

were founded; schools were encouraged, and school libraries 
were established ; while a system of vast public works through- 
out the Empire afforded employment to the working classes. 
France secured her full share of the increase of wealth and 
comfort that came to the world so rapidly during these years.-^ 
429. Foreign Wars to i860. — In 1852 Napoleon had declared 
" The Empire is Peace " ; but he found himself irresistibly 
impelled to war, in order to keep the favor of the army and 
of the populace by reviving the glories of the First Empire. 
Thus his foreign policy soon became aggressive, and the first 
period of his reign saw a series of military and diplomatic 
victories that dazzled France. The two most important wars 
of the period were the Crimean (1854-1856) and the Italian 
(1859). 

a. France had a trivial quarrel with Russia over the guardianship of 
Christian pilgrims at Jerusalem. England was hostile to Russia, fearing 
lest that Power should force itself to the Mediterranean and endanger 
England's route to India. Russia and Turkey were at war in the Black 
Sea. Through Napoleon's intrigues, in 1854, France and England joined 
Turkey, by declaring war upon Russia. The struggle was waged mainly 
in Crimea, and took its name from that peninsula. It became essentially 
a war for the defense of Turkey against Russia. Russia was defeated, 
but no permanent results of importance were achieved. However, at the 
close of the contest, Napoleon gathered representatives of all the leading 
Powers to the Congress of Paris, to make peace, and France seemed 
again to have become the leader in European politics.^ 

b. In 1859 Napoleon joined the kingdom of Sardinia in a war against 
Austria (§ 460). His ostensible purpose was to free Italy. He won great 
victories at Magenta and Solferino,^ near the scene of the early triumphs 
of the First Napoleon over the same foe ; and then he made unexpected 

1 Review §§ 419-428 and 400-401, to get a view of France together with the 
rest of Europe for this period. Such a review should be repeated at § 456. 

2 Europe had enjoyed freedom from great wars for forty years, — since the 
fall of the First Napoleon. The important achievement of the Congress of 
Paris was the abolition of privateering by the great European Powers. 
Unfortunately the United States refused to accede to this policy, and so 
suffered soon afterward in the American Civil War from European sympathy 
for Southern privateering. 

3 Some military critics call these victories accidental. 



428 FEANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 43C 

peace, to the dismay and wrath of the half -freed Italians. For his pay, 
Napoleon received from Italy the provinces of Nice and Savoy, and so 
restored some of the territory which his uncle had lost. 

430. Foreign Policy, 1860-1870. — The second period of Na- 
poleon's rule was a long series of humiliations and blunders 
in foreign affairs. 

a. In aiding Italy against Austria in 1859, Napoleon had 
offended the Pope and also the clerical party in France. Na- 
poleon, however, wished to keep the Pope a temporal prince, 
and so he stepped in to prevent the new Kingdom of Italy from 
seizing Eome for its capital. This act lost him the friendship 
of the Italians also. 

h. He favored the Southern Confederacy in the American 
Civil War, and repeatedly urged England to unite with him in 
acknowledging it as an independent state. Thus he incurred 
the hostility of the United States. Then, in 1863 he entered 
upon a disastrous attempt in Mexico. That country had re- 
pudiated its debts. Several European governments had sent 
fleets to its ports to enforce payment; but soon it became 
evident that Napoleon meant much more than the mere col- 
lection of debts. Thereupon, the other governments withdrew 
from the enterprise. Napoleon then sent a large army to over- 
throw the Mexican Eepublic and to set up as "Emperor" his 
protege, Maximilian, an Austrian prince. Napoleon's motives 
were to secure a larger share of the Mexican trade for France, 
to increase the prestige of France as arbiter in the destinies 
of nations, and to forward his plan of a union of the Latin 
peoples of Europe and America, under French leadership, 
against the Teutonic states. His act was a striking defiance 
of the Monroe Doctrine of the United States ; but his purpose 
seemed triumphant until the close of the American Civil War. 
Then the government of the United States, in unmistakable 
terms, demanded the withdrawal of the French troops from 
Mexico. Napoleon was obliged to comply. Soon afterward 
Maximilian was overthrown by the Mexicans, and captured 
and shot. 



§432] THE SECOND EMPIRE, 1852-1870. 429 

c. Most serious of all Napoleon's checks were his disap- 
pointments regarding the Ehine frontier. He wished to re- 
store the old boundaries there, and he made fruitless attempts 
to do so by diplomacy and by taking advantage of wars in 
Germany. All these efforts failed ; and Bismarck, the Prussian 
statesman, turned them to such advantage that the small 
German states came to look npon Napoleon as an unscrupulous 
and dangerous neighbor (§ 469). Thus the way was paved for 
their warm alliance with Prussia against France, when war 
broke out, soon after, between the two countries. 

431. Second Period: Internal Policy. — Napoleon intended to 
keep his pledges and to give to France, from time to time, a 
larger measure of self-government. A beginning was made 
in 1860, Avhen the Legislative Chamber was permitted to 
discuss fully the policy of the government and to express 
its judgment in an address to the throne. From this time 
the party of constitutional opposition increased rapidly. In 
the election of 1857 only five opposition candidates had se- 
cured seats ; in the next election (1863) the numbers of the 
opposition rose to forty-three ; and in 1869 the Chamber was 
almost equally divided. 

When the government's corrupt control over elections is 
taken into account, this result indicates that France was 
ready to repudiate Napoleon. That ruler, feeling his weak- 
ness, tried vainly to win back popular favor by concession 
after concession, until at his fall he had nearly restored par- 
liamentary government.^ 

432. The Franco-Prussian War and the Fall of the Empire. — 
In 1870, as a last resort, Napoleon tried to win back the favor 
of the nation by war with Prussia. The opening of the con- 

1 In 1870 Napoleon appealed to the nation in a plebiscite for a vote of 
confidence, and the vote stood in his favor by about seven million to one and 
a half million. But this meant only that France would rather endure his 
rule than meet the certain revolution that would follow if he were to be 
overthrown by violence. Even so, the cities showed a surprisingly large 
vote against him. Advanced students will find a good passage in Von Sybel's 
German Empire, VII, 268-270, upon this matter. 



430 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§433 

flict showed that the government was honeycombed with cor- 
ruption and inefficiency. Regiments lacked men and discipline ; 
arsenals were empty; supplies of all kinds were wanting or 
were of poor quality. Prussia had been preparing diligently 
for the long-foreseen conflict, and every step in the opening 
of her campaign was carefully planned. The Prussians won 
victory after victory. In a few weeks, one French army of 
one hundred and seventy-three thousand was securely besieged 
at Metz, and another of over one hundred and thirty thou- 
sand, with Napoleon in person, was defeated and captured at 
Sedan.^ 

For Further Reading. — As before. Note especially the references 
in the footnotes. Advanced students will find an admirable treatment of 
the diplomatic history of the period in Von Sybel's German Empire, VII. 

V. THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

A. Through Poreign and Civil War: September, 1870, 
TO Mat, 1871. 

433. The Government of National Defense. — The news of Sedan 
reached Paris, September 3, 1870. The city had been kept 
in ignorance, as far as possible, of the previous reverses of the 
French armies; and now it went mad with excitement and 
dismay. The next day a mob invaded the hall where the 
legislature was already debating Napoleon's deposition, and, 
with this reenforcement, a few radical deputies tumultuously 
proclaimed the Third Republic and set up a provisional Gov- 
ernment of National Defense. 

The armies of France were already destroyed, except the 
one besieged at Metz, and this one was soon to surrender, 
through the treachery or faint-heartedness of its general. 
France seemed utterly incapable of further resistance to the 
invader, and the new government tried at first to secure an 



1 Napoleon remained for a few months a prisoner of war, and died in 
England a few years later (1873). 



§434] THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. 431 

honorable peace. But when Prussia made it plain that she 
intended to punish France by taking large slices of her terri- 
tory, the conflict entered upon a new stage and became a heroic 
struggle for defense. 

For this second stage of the Franco-Prussian War, there are 
two main features : the gallant resistance of Paris through 
a four-months' siege, and a magnificent, patriotic uprising 
in the provinces. Gamhetta, a leading member of the Govern- 
ment of Defense, escaped from Paris, in a balloon, to organize 
the movement in the provinces, and ruled there with dicta- 
torial power. For a time success seemed possible. Exhausted 
France raised army after army, and amazed the world by her 
tremendous exertions. But in the end it became apparent 
that the iron grasp of the German armies, with their perfect 
organization, could not be broken. The great population of 
Paris began to suffer the horrors of famine ; and on January 28 
the city surrendered. Plainly France must accept the terms 
of the conqueror. 

434. The National Assembly, and the Terms of Peace. — There 
was no government with any real authority to make peace ; 
and so an armistice was arranged, to permit the election of a 
National Assembly. The Assembly was chosen by manhood 
suffrage. It met toward the close of February, 1871, and 
created a provisional government by electing Thiers " Head of 
the Executive Power of the French Republic." 

The terms of peace were hard. The Prussians demanded 
that France should cede Alsace and part of Lorraine, with 
the great fortresses of Metz and Strasburg, and pay a huge 
war indemnity of one and a fifth billion dollars. Day after 
day the aged Thiers wrestled in pleading argument with Bis- 
marck, the grim German Chancellor, to secure better terms. 
He did finally secure a slight reduction in the indemnity, to 
one billion, and the retention by France of Belfort, one of the 
cities of Alsace. In return for these concessions, Bismarck 
humiliated Paris by marching German troops in triumphal 
progress into the capital. 



432 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 435 

435. The Paris Commune of 1871. — The National Assembly 
had hardly arranged peace with the foreign foe, before it had 
to meet a terrible rebellion at home. During the siege of 
Paris, all the adult males of the city had been organized and 
armed as National Guards. Twice during the siege (in Octo- 
ber and in January) the Radicals had tried by violent rebel- 
lion to supplant the Government of Defense with a more 
radical committee, but in both cases they had been quickly 
put down. When the siege was over, however, nearly every 
one who could get away from the distressed city did tempo- 
rarily remove, including one hundred and fifty thousand of 
the wealthier National Guards, and so Paris was left in con- 
trol of the radical element. This element, too, kept its arms 
and its military organization, and it now set up a kind of gov- 
ernment by choosing a large " Central Committee." 

The ISlational Assembly had established itself, not at Paris, 
but at Versailles. The Republicans of Paris suspected it of 
wishing to restore the monarchy. In fact, a large majority of 
the members were Monarchists, as events were soon to prove 
(§ 437). The Assembly, too, had put in command of the 
army a man who had assisted in Napoleon's coup d'etat and 
who might not unreasonably be suspected of trying another 
such move in favor of some of the royalist pretenders. More- 
over, it had aggrieved the poorer classes of Paris by some of 
its decrees : it had insisted upon the immediate payment of 
rents and other debts incurred during the siege; and it did 
away in large measure with the pay of the National Guard, 
which since the surrender had been a kind of poor-relief. In 
addition to all this, the Reds and Socialists were always ready 
for any rising that promised success. 

For two weeks Paris and Versailles faced each other with 
ill-concealed hostility. The National Guards collected a large 
number of cannon in one of the strongest forts of Paris. 
March 18 the Assembly sent a detachment of troops to secure 
these guns. A mob gathered to resist them ; and the troops 
refused to fire, and looked on while two of their officers were 



§435] THE PARIS COMMUNE. 433 

seized and shot by the rebels. This was the opening of the 
insurrection. 

Eor a time, however, there was still hope that a conflict 
might be averted. Paris decided to hold an election for a 
•' General Council," and it was possible that the moderate ele- 
ment might win. Two hundred thousand votes were cast, and 
the Radicals and Eevolutionists elected sixty-four ^ members, 
to about twenty Moderates. This hopeless minority refused to 
take their seats. Then the Radical Council, acting with the 
" Central Committee " of the Guards, set up the Commune and 
adopted the red flag. 

In 1848 the Paris Radicals had learned that the country districts of 
France were overwhelmingly opposed to Socialism and to "Red Republi- 
canism "; and these elements had now become advocates of extreme local 
self-government. If each city and village could become an almost inde- 
pendent state, then the Radicals lioped to carry out their policy in Paris 
and in the other large cities. The supporters of this program wished 
the central government of France to be merely a loose federation of in- 
dependent "communes" ;2 and so tliey called tliemselves "Federals." 
They are properly described also as "Communards"; but the name 
" Communist," which is often applied to them, is lilcely to give a false 
impression. That latter name is generally used only for those who oppose 
private property. Many of the Communards were also Communists, but 
probably the majority of them hardly went to such an extreme. 

The supporters of the Paris Commune certainly included tlie greater part 
of the citizens remaining in Paris ; but France, still bleeding from invasion, 
very properly refused to be dismembered by internal revolt. The excited 
bourgeoisie felt, moreover, that the institution of property itself was at 
stake, and they confounded all Communards togetlier as criminals seeking 
to overthrow society. Little chance was given to show what the Com- 
mune would have done, if left to itself; but its government was made up 
of visionary enthusiasts and unpractical or criminal revolutionists, and 
certainly, in actual operation, it tended toward anarchy. Like attempts 
to set up Communes took place at Marseilles, Toulouse, Narbonne, and 
Lyons ; but they came to little, and civil war was confined to Paris. 

1 About twenty of these were workingmen. 

2 As Hanotaux, a prominent French statesman and historian puts it, " The 
men of the Commune wished to make a Switzerland of France, — a socialized 
Switzerland." 



434 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 436 

436. The Civil War. — April 2 the Versailles Assembly at- 
tacked Paris with the regular troops that had now returned 
from captivity in Germany. The struggle lasted two months 
and was utterly ferocious. Both sides were guilty of horrible 
atrocities. The Assembly refused to treat the Communards 
as regular combatants, and shot down all prisoners taken in 
sorties. In retaliation, the Commune seized several hundred 
hostages from the better classes left in Paris, declaring that it 
would execute three of them for each of its soldiers shot after 
surrender. In fact, however, it did not carry out this threat ; 
and the hostages were not harmed until the Commune had been 
overthrown, when, in the final disorder, an unauthorized mob 
did put sixty-three of them to death, — the venerable Arch- 
bishop of Paris among them. 

The bombardment of Paris by the Versailles government 
was far more destructive than that by the Germans had been. 
Finally the troops forced their way into the city, which was 
already in flames in many sections. Por eight days more, 
desperate fighting went on in the streets, before the rebellion 
was suppressed.^ Court-martial executions of large batches of 
prisoners continued for many months afterward; and, besides 
the slaughtered, some thirteen thousand survivors were con- 
demned to transportation, before the rage of the victorious 
bourgeoisie was sated. There are few darker stains on the page 
of history than the cruelty and brutality of this middle-class 
vengeance.^ 

1 The Commune had arranged mines in the sewers to hlow up certain por- 
tions of the streets where the invaders were expected to enter; and, during 
its hrief rule, it had cast down the triumphal column of Napoleon I, com- 
memorating his victories, on the ground that such glorification of wars of 
conquest was unworthy a civilized people. These facts, together with some 
destruction by the mob after the Commune had ceased to control the city, gave 
rise to the report that the Commune tried to destroy Paris when it could no 
longer retain possession. No such intention is needed to explain an enormous 
destruction under the conditions of the war. The world has never ceased to 
lament the loss to the art collections of the city. 

2 Cf. § 344, close ; and, for details, see Hanotaux, Contemporary France, I, 
221-228. 



1 



§438] THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 1871-1879. 435 

B. From the Suppression of the Commune to the 
Secure Establishment of the Eepublic, 1871-1879. 

437. Nature and Powers of the Assembly. — The Assembly had 
been elected simply with a view to making peace. In choosing 
it, men had thought of nothing else. ^ It was limited by no 
constitution and it had no definite term of office. Certainly 
it had not been commissioned to make a constitution or to con- 
tinue to rule indefinitely; but it did both these things. 

At the election, people had chosen conservative candidates, 
because they wanted men who could be counted upon not to 
renew the war rashly. It turned out that the majority of the 
members were Monarchists; and they failed to set up a king, 
only because they were divided into three rival groups, — 
Imperialists (Bonapartists), Orleanists (supporters of the 
Count of Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe), and Legitimists 
(adherents of the Count of Chambord, grandson of Charles X). 
The three factions agreed in believing that a ncAV election 
would increase the strength of the Eepublicans; and so for 
five years they resisted all demands of the republican members 
for dissolution. The Republicans also were divided into three 
groups, — the Moderates, the Left, and the Extreme-Left, or 
the Radicals. 

438. Presidency of Thiers, 1871-1873. — Peace had been 
made, and the rebellion crushed. Now the Assembly felt com- 
pelled to replace the Provisional Government by some form 
that would seem more regular. Accordingly Thiers was made 
" President of the Republic. " In truth, however, the govern- 
ment remained "provisional." The majority of the Assembly 
hoped to change to a monarchy at some favorable moment, and 
they gave Thiers no fixed term of office. Still, this presidency 
lasted more than two years longer, — the most glorious years 
of the old statesman's life, — and it was marked by three im- 
portant features.^ 

iRead Hanotaux, I, 30-33 and 70. 

2 For Thiers' character and work, see Hanotaux, I, 43-62. 



436 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 439 

a. France took up gallantly the huge icork of reorganization. 
Schools, army, and church were reconstructed (§§446, 449, 483). 

6. France was freed from foreign occupation, and Thiers won 
the proud title of "Liberator of the Territory." It had been 
intended that the vast war indemnity should be paid in install- 
ments through three years, and German garrisons were to 
remain in France until payment was complete. But France 
astonished all beholders by her rapid recovery of prosperity; 
and, in eighteen months, the indemnity was paid in coin, and 
the last German soldier had left French soil. The government 
loans (§ 308, note) were taken up enthusiastically by all classes 
of Frenchmen, and in great measure by the industrious and 
prosperous peasantry, so that it appeared that the government 
would not have been forced to borrow at all from foreign cap- 
italists, had it not chosen to do so. 

c. Rejniblicanism teas strengtliened. Thiers was an old Or- 
leanist; but he saw that to set up a king was to risk civil war. 
Accordingly, he allied himself with the Moderate Republicans 
in the Assembly, and baffled triumphantly the efforts of the 
Monarchists. Meantime Republicanism grew stronger daily 
in the country. 

439. Monarchists in Control. — In 1873, a momentary coalition 
of Monarchists and Radicals in the Assembly forced Thiers to 
resign. In his place the Monarchists elected Marshal Mac- 
Mahon, an ardent Orleanist. For some months a monarchic 
restoration seemed almost certain. Legitimists and Orleanists 
had at last united in support of the Count of Chambord, who 
had agreed to adopt the Count of Paris as his heir. The Mon- 
archists had the machinery of the government in their hands, 
and all arrangements were complete for declaring the Bourbon 
heir the King of France, when the two factions split once more 
on the question of a symbol. The Orleanists wished to keep 
the tricolor, the flag of the 1830 Revolution, and certainly the 
only flag the army would have followed. But the Count of 
Chambord denounced the tricolor as the "symbol of revolu- 
tion," and declared that he would not give up the white lilies 



i| 



i 



§440] THE THIRD HEPUBLIC, 1871-1879. 437 

of the old Bourbon monarchy, the symbol of divine right. On 
this scruple the chance of the Monarchists came to shipwreck. 

440. The Constitution. — Then in 1875, despairing of an 
immediate restoration, the Assembly adopted a series of laws 
fixing more precisely the frame of government. As modified 
slightly by later amendments, these "constitutional laws" 
make the present constitution of the French Kepublic. They 
have never been submitted to the people. 

The Constitution is very brief, because the Monarchist major- 
ity preferred to leave the details to be settled by later legisla- 
tion, hoping to adapt them to a kingly government. The word 
''republic" did not appear in the original draft, but it was 
introduced indirectly by amendment: the first draft spoke of 
a '' Chief Executive" ; an amendment changed this title to 
" President of the Republic. " The change was adopted by a 
majority of one in a vote of seven hundred and five. Later, 
in 1884, a new amendment declared the republican form of 
government to be ''not subject to repeal." 

Tlie legislature consists of two houses. The Senate contains 
three hundred members, holding office for nine years, one-third 
going out each third year. At first, seventy-five of the mem- 
bers were to hold office for life, but in 1884 an amendment de- 
clared that no more life members should be chosen. Senators 
are elected by the departments of France, in electoral colleges, 
and the number from the different departments varies with the 
population. The Deputies (lower house) are chosen by man- 
hood suffrage for a term of four years. When the Senate and 
the House of Deputies agree that it is desirable to amend the 
constitution, or when it is necessary to choose a President, the 
two houses meet together at Versailles, away from possible 
disturbances in Paris. In this joint form, they take the name 
National Assembly. A majority vote of the National Assembly 
suffices to change the constitution. 

Tlie executive consists of a President, elected for seven years 
by the National Assembly, and of the ministry he appoints. 
The President has much less power than the President of the 



438 PRANCE SINCE 1815. [§441 

United States. He is more nearly in the position of a short- 
term, elective, English king. That is, he is little more than 
a figurehead. He can act only through his ministers. The 
ministers, as in England, are the real executive, and they wield 
enormous power, directing all legislation, appointing a vast 
multitude of officers, and carrying on the government. Nomi- 
nally, the President appoints the ministers ; but, in practice, 
he must always name those who -will be acceptable to the 
chambers, and the ministry is obliged to resign when it ceases 
to have a majority of Deputies to support its measures. The 
Deputies maintain a control over the ministers, by the right 
of interpellation. That is, any Deputy may address to the 
ministers a formal question, calling upon them to explain 
their action in any matter. Such a question must be an- 
swered fully, and it always affords a chance to censure and 
overthrow the ministry.^ 

441. The Republicans gain Possession of the Government, 
1876-1879. — Even after the adoption of the constitution, the 
Assembly did not give way at once to a new legislature. But 
almost every bye-election ^ resulted in a victory for the Repub- 
licans, and by 1876 that party had gained a bare majority of 
the seats. It at once dissolved the Assembly, and the new 
elections created a House of Deputies two-thirds Republican. 

The Senate with its seventy-five life members Avas still 
monarchic ; and, with its support, MacMahon tried to keep a 
Monarchist ministry, but after a short contest he was forced 
to yield. During this contest the President and Senate dis- 
solved the House of Deputies (as the constitution gives them 
power to do when they act together), and the ministry changed 
prefects and local officers all over France, in order to control 
the election ; but the Republicans rallied under the leadership 
of the fiery Gambetta (§ 433), and the new House of Deputies 
was even more strongly Republican than the preceding one. 

1 Advanced students should consult Lowell, Governments and Parties, I, 
120-122, and compare with English ministerial government. 

2 To fill a vacancy, upon death or resignation. 



§ 442] CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC. 439 

This body then withheld all votes of supply, until MacMahon 
appointed a ministry acceptable to it.^ 

In 1879 the renewal of one-third the Senate gave the Re- 
publicans a majority in that House also, and, soon after, Mac- 
Mahon resigned. Then the National Assembly elected to the 
presidency Grevy, an ardent Eepublican ; and all branches of 
the government had at last come under Republican control. 

For the first time in the history of France, republican gov- 
ernment was established by the calm will of the nation. Four 
times between 1792 and 1871 had the Republicans seized 
Paris ; three times .they had set up a republic ; but never be- 
fore had they truly represented the deliberate determination 
of the nation. In 1879 they came into power, not by violence, 
but by an eight-years' constitutional struggle against the polit- 
ical tricks of an accidental Monarchist majority. This time 
it was the Republicans whom the conservative, peace-loving 
peasantry supported. 

442. Constitutional Relations of President and Deputies. — Grdvy 
served out the full seven years of his presidency; and in 1886 he was re- 
elected. Then a curious constitutional question came up for settlement. 
Grdvy's son-in-law had been guilty of shameful corruption in office, and 
the President, though personally incorruptible, had tried to shield him 
from punishment. Wlien this became known, the Deputies demanded 
that Gr^vy should resign, and they overthrew ministry after ministry, 
making it clear that they would not support any administration appointed 
by him. Finally the President resigned ; and the Deputies had estab- 
lished a valuable precedent as to their control over the executive.^ 

1 Cf. Lowell, Governments and Parties, I, 22-24, and, for later develop- 
ments, 97-99. 

2 Not until 1906 had any other president of France served a full term. The 
subsequent presidents, with their terms of office, have been as follows : — 
F. Sadi-Carnot, grandson of the great Carnot who " organized victory " (§ 342) , 

1887-1894 : assassinated by an Italian anarchist before the close of his term. 
Casimir Perier, June, 1894-January, 1895 ; resigned because of trouble with 

the legislature. 
Felix Faure, 1895-1899: died in office, after two attempts upon his life by 

anarchists. 
Emile Loubet, 1899-1906. 
Armand Fallieres (Radical), 1906 -. 



440 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 443 

C. Crises since 1879. 

Since 1879, as we can see now, France has not been in serious danger 
of revolution. There have been, however, several brief political crises, 
during which revolution seemed possible to men of the time. Two of 
these crises deserve attention, i — the kulturkampf and Boulangism. 

443. The Kulturkampf. — In 1875, the Catholic clergy of 
France vs^ere mainly Monarchists, distrusting and fearing the 
Republic. Moreover, the extreme clerical party looked to the 
Pope for direction in political affairs, and acknowledged an 
allegiance to him superior to that they felt for the national 
government. Because of this devotion to a power '' beyond 
the mountains," they were called '' Ultramontanists." 

The Republican leaders turned this passive attitude into 
open political war. They adopted Gambetta's famous phrase 
in the elections of 1876 and 1881, — " Our foe is Clericalism," 
— and the first Republican ministries (especially in the years 
1880-1884) entered upon a struggle to take from the church 
its control over the family and the child. This conflict be- 
tween the church and the state over education is called the 
kulturkampf.^ France is mainly Catholic in religion ; but the 
majority of French Catholics were not Ultramontanists, and 
the state was victorious. The Jesuits were expelled from 
the country. All other religious orders were forbidden to 
keep private schools or to teach in the public schools. Mar- 
riage was made a civil contract,^ not a religious sacrament ; 
and divorce was made legal, despite the doctrines of the church. 

This policy of the Republicans aroused a fierce opposition ; 
and in the elections of 1885 t;ke Monarchists and Clericals 
made decided gains. They did not secure a majority, however, 
and soon afterward the conflict was moderated by the states- 
manship of Pope Leo XIII. Before the elections of 1893, Leo 
made clear his desire that French Catholics should rally to 

1 Two minor crises, suitable for special reports, were connected with the 
Panama Scandals (1893) and the Dreyfus Trials (1898 and 1905). 

2 For like contests in other Catholic countries, see §§ 482, 490, 508. 

3 It ig performed by a civil officer. The religious ceremony may follow. 



§445] FRANCE TO-DAY — GOVERNMENT. 441 

the support of the Republic and try to get such privileges as 
they needed by influencing legislation, not by trying to change 
the government.^ The order was generally obeyed. The irrec- 
oncilable withdrew from public life, and the rest of the old 
Ultramontanists took the name of ''Rallied Republicans." On 
its side, the Republican government quietly ceased for a time 
to enforce most of the new legislation against church schools. 

444. Boulanger. — While this Ultramontane dissatisfaction 
was at its height, danger threatened for a time from another 
quarter. From 1885 to 1888, Boulanger, a popular general 
and an advocate of a war of revenge against Germany, seems 
to have hoped to make himself master of France, after the 
fashion of the Napoleons ; but the movement, if ever serious, 
came quickly to utter collapse. When the government ordered 
a trial, Boulanger fled, and soon afterward took his own life. 

D. Fkance To-day. 

445. Stability and Progress. — For nearly a century France 
passed from revolution to revolution so incessantly that the 
world came to doubt whether any French government could 
be stable.^ But the present Republic has lasted twice as long 
as any other government in France since 1789, and to-day (1907) 
it seems as secure as most European monarchies. Even the 
ministries change less frequently than formerly, and when a 
political crisis comes it is met more and more with moderation, 
much as in English-speaking countries. Since 1893, the Mon- 
archists have had little weight in the Assembly; while the 
Socialists, at the other extreme, have become a true political 
party, working for their ends by constitutional means. The 
age of Revolution in France seems to have ended; the age of a 
parliamentary repiiblic has fairly begun. Other progress has 
not been neglected. In literature and science, France once 
more (after long eclipse) shines forth as a leader of European 

1 McCarthy's Leo XIII, 182-201. 

2 The French felt in the same way toward England for some time after the 
English revolutions of the seventeenth century. 



442 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 440 

thought, and in material wealth her people as a whole are the 
richest in Europe. 

Aside from the practice of self-government the chief lines 
ot political interest in recent years have been two: (1) radical 
legislatio?i to improve the condition of the laboring class, — such 
as an eight-hour law for miners (1902), — and (2) legislation 
regarding church and state (§ 446). 

446. The Kulturkampf again : New Relations between Church 
and State. — Seventy-eight per cent of the people of France 
are Catholics. Other religions comprise about two per cent. 
Twenty per cent have no religious connection. In the reorgani- 
zation of France under Thiers' presidency, the principles of 
Napoleon's Concordat (§ 360 a) were extended to all religions. 
No church was "established," in the sense in which the 
Episcopal Church is the established church in England. That 
is, no church was given political power or special privileges. 
But the state assumed the support and the control of four re- 
ligions, — Catholic, Protestant (Lutheran and Reformed), Jew- 
ish, and Mohammedan (in Algeria) ; and it agreed to treat in 
like n)anner any other sect which could show one hundred 
thousand members. For all these organizations, until 1905, 
the state provided buildings and paid the clergy, and likeivise 
supervised the ap)])ointment of the clergy. 

The agitation connected with the Dreyfus trial (§ 443, note) 
made it clear that monarchic sympathies were still strong, at 
the end of the century, among both the army officers and the 
aristocratic classes in general. French statesmen concluded 
that this was due largely to the remaining clerical influence 
in the schools ; and, in 1901, drastic legislation shut out the 
churches from all share in education, public or private. These 
laws, unlike those of twenty years earlier, were enforced rigor- 
ously. During the next two years many thousands of church 
schools were closed by the police, sometimes amid riot and 
bloodshed. 

This new kulturkampf led to a mightier issue. The Pope 
protested against the anti-clerical laws and deposed two bishops 



§447] FRANCE TO-DAY — CHURCH AND STATE. 443 

who had acquiesced in them (1904). The government declared 
this act a breach of the Concordat (§ 360 a). It recalled its 
ambassador from the Papal Court and prepared a plan which 
it called '' Separation of Church and State," but Avhich zealous 
Catholics denounce as robbery inspired by anti-religious feel- 
ing. In 1905 this plan became law, and in the elections of 
1906, the nation gave an overwhelming endorsement to the 
whole anti-clerical policy. 

According to the law of 1905, the state is no longer to con- 
trol the appointment of the clergy, though it continues to 
exercise a jealous oversight to keep them from interfering in 
politics or schools. The state also ceases to pay the clergy 
(this withdrawal of support to be gradual, over a period of 
years), and it assumes possession of all churches and church 
property. Each religious congregation, however, was to be 
permitted the permanent use of its former church property, if 
within a year it organized as a "cultural association." The 
Protestants universally complied with this provision ; but, 
despite the advice of the French bishops, the Pope declared 
that such control of church matters by " associations " was 
incompatible with the Catholic organization. He forbade Catho- 
lics to recognize the law. " Compromises " offered by the gov- 
ernment were rejected. When the "year of grace" expired, in 
December, 1906, the government shrewdly declined to close the 
churches, but it evicted great numbers of clergy from their 
homes, and banished some from the country, for disregard of 
the law. Other measures of coercion are under consideration 
(January, 1907). Meanwhile the extreme Catholic party hope 
that the " martyrdom " of the faithful and beloved clergy will 
rouse the nation to repudiate the government's policy. 

447. Local Government. — France is divided into eighty-six 
departments ; the departments are subdivided into arrondisse- 
ments ; these are divided again into cantons ; and the cantons 
are made up of communes. This arrangement dates from the 
First Revolution (§ 325), but the communes, of. course, are 
ancient units. The two important divisions of these four are 



444 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§ 447 

the two extremes — the department and the commnne.'^ Each 
of these has its own " budget " : that is, it levies taxes for local 
purposes and expends them in its own way. Each is a corpo- 
ration, and can own property and sue and be sued at law. 
Each has a large amount of self-government, with machinery 
for managing affairs. The department has an executive offi- 
cer, called a prefect, and a General Council. The prefect is 
appointed by the Minister of the Interior, and he may be 
removed by the same authority. He appoints police, postmen, 
and other local officers. The General Council is elected by 
universal suffrage. It exercises control over local taxation and 
expenditures, especially for roads, asylums, and, to some degree, 
for schools ; but its decisions are subject to the supervision of 
the central government, which may even dissolve it. 

The thirty-six thousand communes vary in size from great 
cities like Marseilles, to rural villages with only two or three 
hundred people. For all of them there is one system of gov- 
ernment. Each has a mayor and a council. Until 1884, the 
mayor was appointed by the Minister of the Interior; since 
1884, he has been elected by the municipal council, but he is 
still regarded as the officer of the central government, which 
may revise his acts or even remove him from office. The mu- 
nicipal council varies in number, according to the size of the 
commune. It is elected by manhood suffrage. All its acts are 
subject to the approval of the perfect or the central govern- 
ment, and the latter may dissolve the council. Paris and 
Lyons are each organized as a department, with even less self- 
government than the other departments of the country. 

Such conditions do not seem very encouraging at first to an 
American student; but the- situation, as compared with the 
past in France, is full of promise. Political interest in the 

1 The two middle divisions are less important than counties in our Northern 
states. The canton is the unit for the administration of justice. The arron- 
dissement is the unit for the election of a deputy to the national legislature, 
like our congressional district. It has an elective council of its own, however, 
and some powers resembling in slight measure those of our counties. 



§449] FRANCE TO-DAY — EDUCATION. 445 

communes is steadily growing, and Frenchmen are learning more 
and more to use the field of self-government open to them.^ 

448. The Judicial System and Political Liberty. Administra- 
tive CouHs.^ — The French system of law seems to an Ameri- 
can or an Englishman to be wanting in safeguards for personal 
liberty. Unlike the previous French constitutions, the present 
constitution has no " bill of rights." That is, there are no pro- 
visions in the fundamental law regarding jury trial, habeas 
corpus privileges, or the right of free speech. Moreover, even 
if there were, the courts could not protect the individual from 
arbitrary acts of the government by appealing to such pro- 
visions, because, in case of conflict between a citizen and the 
government, the case is tried, not in ordinary civil courts, but 
in administrative courts made up of government officials. This 
does not mean that in ordinary times an individual is likely to 
be treated unjustly. As a rule, the administrative courts mete 
out excellent justice. But in case of any supposed danger to 
the government, they are liable to become careless of the rights 
of an individual. 

449. Education. — The plans of the early Revolutionists for 
educating the people (§ 345) came to little ; and for a long 
time after the Restoration, nothing was done. In 1827, over a 
third of the communes of France had no primary school what- 
ever, and nearly a third of the population could neither read 
nor write. In the latter part of the reign of Louis Philippe, a 
fair beginning was made in a system of primary schools, but 
the real growth of popular education dates from the Third 
Republic. Almost as soon as the war with Germany was over, 
France adopted in large measure the German plan for schools 
and for her army. To-day, in every commune there is a pri- 
mary school or group of schools. Education is free and com- 
pulsory and strictly regulated by the state. That is, the central 
government appoints teachers and regulates the courses of 

1 Cf. § 358, and read Boutmy, Constitutional Studies, 145. 

2 For an excellent statement of the growth of such courts, see Lowell's 
Governments and Parties, I, 50-55. 



446 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§450 

study. Each department has an excellent system of secondary 
schools, called lycees. When its recent birth is considered, 
the educational system seems marvelously efficient. 

450. The Land and Peasantry. — The peculiar thing about 
French society is the large number of small landowners and 
the prosperity of this landed peasantry. Half the entire 
population live on the soil, and three-fourths the soil is under 
crops. The subdivision of the soil is carried so far that it is 
difficult to introduce the best machinery (though neighborhood 
associations are being founded to own machinery in common) ; 
but the peasant is industrious, thrifty, -prosperous, happy, and 
conservative. 

The peasant wishes to educate his son, and he has a high 
standard of living, compared with other European peasantry. 
With five or six children, a farmer owning five or ten acres 
would almost necessarily find it impossible to keep up this 
high standard, and to leave his children as well off as he him- 
self had been. Therefore the peasantry do not wish large 
families, and population is almost stationary. At present it is 
a little under forty millions. 

451. Colonies and Foreign Relations. — About 1750 France 
bade fair to be the great colonial power of the world.' The 
century -long duel with England was then half over. "New 
France " was written on the map across the valley of the 
St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and the richest lands of 
the Orient seemed within the French grasp. Fifty years later 
saw France stripped of all possessions outside Europe, except 
a few unimportant islands in the Indian Ocean and in the 
Antilles and some small ports in India (§§ 275, 277, 282-283). 

But in the nineteenth century France became again a colonial 
power. In 1830, the government of Charles X took advantage 
of an insult by the Dey of Algiers to a French consul to seize 
territory in North Africa. In the middle of the century this 
foothold had grown, through savage and bloody wars, into 
complete military occupancy of Algeria; and in the early 
years of the Third Republic civil rule was introduced. Since 



§451] FRANCE TO-DAY — COLONIES. 447 

1880 Algeria has been not so much a foreign possession, or a 
colony, as a part of France separated from the rest by a strip 
of sea. The French make only a small part of the population, 
it is true, but the country is orderly and civilized. ^ It is 
divided into three departments, which are ruled essentially like 
the departments in European France; and it has representatives 
in the French legislature. French rule has restored to the long- 
desolate Barbary coast the fertility and bloom which belonged 
to that region when it was the garden of the Roman world. 

In 1881 France seized upon Tunis as a "protectorate." That 
is, France controls its relations with foreign governments, but 
leaves it to manage its own internal matters — except that the 
French enjoy special traveling privileges in the country. In 
1904, France began to reduce Morocco to a like condition ; but 
this process was checked temporai-ily, by German oj)position, 
and Morocco is (1907) only a semi-protectorate (§ 587 b). 

The rest of the vast colonial empire, apart from these pos- 
sessions in ISTorth Africa, has been acquired since the Franco- 
Prussian War, except for some slight beginnings made by 
Napoleon III. The seizure of territory has very commonly been 
based upon ancient claims connected with the period before the 
French Revolution, and it has been carried on in some cases 
with high-handed disregard of the rights of weaker peoples. ^ 

In Asia, France has chief possession of the great peninsula 
of Indo-China.'^ In Africa, France kept a hold upon Senegal 
from her ancient colonial empire, and since 1884 she has 
acquired huge possessions on both the east and west coasts, 
besides the great island of Madagascar (map, facing j)age 611). 
In America, France holds Guiana, or Cayenne, with a few 
islands in the Antilles. In Oceania, between 1884 and 1887, 
she secured New Caledonia and several smaller islands. 

1 All these statements apply to the settled portions under civil rule. The 
vast districts farther inland are still harharous. 

2 As in Siam and Madagascar. 

'^ The order in which the different provinces in Asia have been acquired is 
as follows: Cambodia (1862), Cochin China (1863), Tonking (1884), Annam 
(1886), Siam, to the Mekong River (1893-1896). 



448 FRANCE SINCE 1815. [§451 

Thougli France has these immense possessions, she is not a 
colonizing nation. Large parts of these regions are almost 
unpeopled, or are inhabited by savage tribes and are nnder 
military government. Even in the settled portions the Euro- 
pean population is small. The total area of the colonial pos- 
sessions is about four million square miles, of which about 
three and a half million are in Africa. All the settled and 
orderly regions have a share in self-government, and most of 
them have representatives in the legislature at Paris. 

For a generation after the Franco-Prussian War, France had 
little weight in European politics. For a long time she hoped 
to recover her lost provinces by another war ; and, to that end, 
she sought feverishly for alliance with Russia (§ 558). This 
alliance may have helped to give France a freer hand in her 
colonial expansion, but on the whole it proved of little value to 
her. Happily, French statesmen have now given iip thought 
of a " war of revenge." They have shown a tendency to ally 
their country with England; and a good understanding between 
these two powers will do much to prevent European war. The 
Democratic Republic is Peace. 

For Fdrther Reading. — The works mentioned on page 413 con- 
tinue to be valuable well into the Third Republic. Fyffe closes in 1878. 
Coubertin, France under the Third Republic, or Hanotaux, Contempo- 
rary France, may be used by advanced students for further details. 
Lebon and Pelet's France as It Is (1890J was an excellent treatment of 
institutions and conditions at its publication. Wilson's The State, 215- 
244, outlines the government. Advanced students can use Lowell's Gov- 
ernments and Parties. All the important and constitutional documents 
are given in Anderson's Constitutions and Documents. 

For recent history, every high school should have one or more good 
Reviews accessible or in the reading rooms, besides an International Year 
Book or The Statesman'' s Year Book, at least for every second or third 
year, and The World Almanac. 

Special Reports. — 1. Great strikes in France since 1880. 2. The 
anarchistic plots since 1893. 3. The French army law of to-day, and the 
strength of the organization. 4. Church and state since 1906. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CENTRAL EUROPE SINCE 1848.1 

I. THE KEVOLUTIONS OF 1848 AND THE RESTORATIONS. 

452. The Year of Revolutions : Threefold Character in Central 
Europe. — The system of Metternich lasted in Europe until 
1848 (§ 401) ; but for some years before that date the forces of 
revolution had been gathering strength for a general explosion. 
Metternich himself saw this. " The world is very sick," he 
wrote to a friend in January, 1848 ; " the one thing certain 
is that there will be tremendous changes." A few weeks later, 
the February Revolution in Paris (§ 419) gave the signal for 
March risings in other lands ; and that month saw Metternich 
a fugitive, escaping from Vienna in a laundry cart, while 
thrones were tottering everywhere in Europe, between Eussia 
and Turkey on the one side and England on the other. The 
kings of Spain, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden made conces- 
sions to popular demands. Even England trembled with a 
Chartist movement (§ 533) and the threat of an Irish rebellion ; 
but the chief interest of the period, outside France, centers in 
Germany and Italy. In these countries the movement was 
threefold: (1) for constitutional liberty and social reform 
within the several states ; (2) for the union of the fragments 
of the German race into a new nation; (3) for the independence 
of the other nations held in subjection by Austria. The three 
forces were interlaced, working sometimes in unison, sometimes 

1 This chapter continues the story from where chapter ii left it. Chapter 
iii was a necessary interlude, inserted because of the influence of France on 
Central Europe in 1848 and 1870. 

449 



450 CENTRAL EUROPE — REVOLUTION OF 1848. [§453 

in opposition : and thus the period is one of indescribable con- 
fusion. Tlae March risings resulted in new constitutions, 
radical reforms, and liberal ministries, in every German state, 
— including Prussia and Austria, — and also in Sardinia, Tus- 
cany, Eome, and Naples. The remains of feudal privilege in 
these lands, too, were swept away. The movement for G-erman 
nationality brought together representatives of all the German 
peoples in a National Assembly at Frankfort. The sentiment 
of nationality in the conglomerate Austrian Empire brought 
on wars for independence by the Italians, Hungarians, and 
Bohemians. 

453. In Detail : Austria and the Revolution. — Of course 
Austria was the storm center. On March 13 came the rising 
in Vienna, to the cry, " Down with Metternich ! " Metternich 
fled, and the Emperor proclaimed a series of reforms, promised 
a constitution, and named a liberal ministry. Bohemia and 
Hungary, where revolt was imminent, were pacified with prom- 
ises of constitutional governments of their own, and all efforts 
were concentrated on putting down the Italian rising. 

On the news of Metternich's overthrow, the people of Milan 
and Venice had driven out the Austrian troops ; and all Italy 
had been swept with a storm of feeling for the permanent 
expulsion of Austria. Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, put 
himself at the head of the movement. The Pope, the Grand 
Duke of Tuscany, and even the King of Naples promised him 
loyal aid ; and Venice, Modena, and other small states in north- 
ern Italy voted for incorporation into the Kingdom of Sardinia. 
But soon the dukes and the King of Naples began to be jealous 
of Sardinia; the Pope was unwilling to break finally with Aus- 
tria; and, on the eve of the struggle, Charles Albert found 
himself deserted by all Italy south of Lombardy, save for a few 
thousand patriotic volunteers. July 25, he was defeated at 
Custozza, and was forced to withdraw into his own dominions 
and to sign a truce. 

Then the movement in Italy passed into the hands of the 
Radicals. Venice set up a republic. Florence drove out her 



§453] THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE. 451 

Grand Duke, and did the same. At Rome, the minister whom 
the Pope had appointed to cany out reform in the Papal States 
was assassinated ; the Pope was driven from the city ; and in 
February, 1849, the " Roman Republic " was proclaimed, under 
the leadership of Mazzini (§ 458). 

While this second series of events was going on in Italy, 
Austria was reestablishing her authority elsewhere. Her great 
ally was race jealousy. The Germans in Bohemia dreaded the 
rule of the Czechs,^ and the disturbances between the two races 
gave an excuse for military intervention. The Austrian army 
was now ready; and in July the newly granted self-govern- 
ment for Bohemia was suddenly replaced by military rule. 
Soon afterward the Radicals in Vienna, alarmed at the signs 
of reaction, rose again and gained brief possession of the city ; 
but in October they were reduced to submission by the victo- 
rious army recalled from Bohemia. Then the incapable Em- 
peror Ferdinand was induced to abdicate in favor of his nephew, 
the shrewd Francis Joseph, who could plead lack of consent 
to all the recent concessions ; and a reactionary ministry was 
appointed under the vigorous Scliwarzenberg. 

Austrian reaction was now well under way. The next vic- 
tory was won in Hungary. In that country, as in Bohemia, 
race dissensions favored Austria. The Hungarians were the 
dominant race; but the various Slav peoples, — Croats, Serbs, 
Slavonians, etc., — who made the majority in the border dis- 
tricts of the country, preferred German rule from Vienna to 
Magyar rule from the nearer Budapest. Just before the re- 
actionary victory in Vienna, the Croats had risen against the 
new Hungarian government. The Hungarians were victorious; 
but after the accession of Francis Joseph, the struggle was 
renewed, with the Emperor plainly in alliance with the Slav 
rebels. Accordingly, Hungary refused to recognize Francis 
Joseph. It declared itself a republic, and, under the presi- 



1 The Czechs are the Slav natives of Bohemia, and they make the majority 
of the inhabitants. 



452 CENTRAL EUROPE — REVOLUTION OF 1848. [§454 

dency of the heroic Kossuth, waged a gallant war for inde- 
pendence. But now the Eussian Tsar took a hand in the 
reactionary movement. In accordance with the Miinchengratz 
compact between the monarchs (§ 400), he sent a large army 
to assist Austria; and the Hungarians were crashed (April- 
August, 1849). A bloody vengeance followed, and Hungarian 
liberty seemed annihilated. 

By this time, too, the old order had been restored in Italy. 
Sardinia had renewed the war in March, 1849, but had met de- 
cisive defeat from the Austrians at Novara, after only a five- 
days' campaign. Venice held out gallantly through a siege 
until August ; ^ but after her fall the only gain that remained 
to the peninsula from 1848 was the Sardinian constitution. 
Louis Napoleon had sent French troops to escort the Pope 
back to Rome, where he remained under French protection 
until 1870. 

454. The Failure to unite Germany : the Frankfort Assembly 
and the Prussian King. — It remained only for Austria to re- 
establish her authority in Germany. For a time this seemed 
improbable enough. While she had been busied in her non- 
German provinces, Germany had been left to Prussia and to 
the National Assembly at Frankfort; and if either of these 
forces had been prompt to act, German unity might have been 
achieved. As it was, little had been done. 

In Berlin, the people thronged the streets from March 13 to 
March 18, in excited crowds, but with no serious revolutionary 
purpose. But on the 18th, in some way, a sharp conflict was 
brought on, and the troops inflicted terrible slaughter on the 
mob. Frederick William IV,^ however, lacked either the reso- 



1 This siege of Venice and the history of the Roman Republic are good 
topics for special reports. The best treatment probably is given in Bolton 
King's Italian Unity. Advanced students may make an excellent study by 
presenting the Italian movements of these years as they are reflected in the 
poems of Mrs. Browning. 

2 In 1840 Frederick William III had been succeeded by his son, Frederick 
William IV, a man even weaker and more vacillating than his father. 



§454] FAILURE OF FRANKFORT ASSEMBLY. 453 

lateness or cold-heartedness to follow up tlie victory. To 
pacify the people, he not only sent into temporary exile his 
brother William (who was commander of the troops and was 
regarded by the mob as responsible for the conflict), but he 
also took part in a procession in honor of the dead, wearing 
the red, gold, and black colors of the German patriots, and he 
summoned a Prussian Parliament to draw up a constitution. 
He put himself at the head, too, of the nationalist movement, 
and declared in a public address, " From this time, Prussian 
interests will be absorbed in those of Germany." Still, what 
would come of all this was to depend largely on the success 
of the people's movement for German unity in the National 
Assembly. 

May 18, 1848, the National Assembly met at Frankfort. 
It had been chosen by manhood suffrage,^ and it now took 
the place of the Diet of the Confederation, which quietly 
slipped away. For nearly two years the unsatisfactory Con- 
federation of 1815 seemed defunct. In its place was a new 
national union, with its government vested in the Frankfort 
Assembly. 

The Assembly had two tasks : (1) to provide a provisional 
government; (2) to adopt a plan for permanent union, or a 
constitution, and to put it into operation. Unhappily the 
meeting was led by theorists, and talkers, and scholars, not by 
statesmen or men of action, and it showed over again the weak- 
ness of the Assemblies of the First French Revolution. The 
leaders could not understand the virtue of compromise or the 
necessity of prompt action, and they spent precious months in 
wordy contests over abstract principles. May and June did 
see an ineffectual provisional government organized ; but mean- 
while Austria had crushed Bohemia, and the " June Days " 

1 A previous Parliament of Liberals at Heidelberg (March 6) had arranged 
the basis for representation for the different German states, and the plan 
had been sanctioned by the Diet of the Confederacy. The Assembly con- 
tained nearly six hundred mimbers and was the first representative body 
in history that could claim tc speak for all Germany. 



454 CENTRAL EUROPE — REVOLUTION OF 1848. [§454 

(§ 423) had dealt a death-blow to Radicalism in France. The 
next four months went to debating a bill of rights, while all 
chance of securing any rights was being lost ; for during this 
time Italy was defeated at Custozza, and Vienna was captured 
by the Eeactionists, while the commercial class all over Ger- 
many was becoming alienated by the long-continued business 
panic. Moreover, the Prussian Parliament at Berlin, which 
was to have drawn up a liberal constitution, had provoked 
King Frederick William into dissolving it. To be sure, the 
King himself then gave a constitution to Prussia; but it 
was of a very conservative character, and Frederick William 
was fast becoming hostile to what he had shortly before called 
the " glorious German Pevolution." In other German states, 
too, the liberal ministries which were set up after the March 
Days were being replaced with startling rapidity. 

These were the conditions when in October the Frankfort 
Assembly at last took up the making of a constitution. Two 
questions then divided the Assembly : (1) should the new gov- 
ernment be monarchic or republican ; and (2) should the new 
nation include the German part of Austria, or exclude that 
dangerous state altogether. Over these problems^ the wran- 
gling went on through the winter of 1849, until Austria 
finally got her hands free in Italy and had elsewhere so far 
regained her old power that she announced that she would 
permit no German union into which she did not enter with 
all her provinces. 

Then the Radicals gave up the impossible republic, and the 
Assembly took the step it should have taken months before : 
it decided for a union ivitJiout Austria, under the name of the 
German Empire, and it offered the proposed imperial crown to 
Frederick William of Prussia. But it was at least six months 
too late. The public sentiment which at that earlier time would 
have forced the Prussian King to accept, had spent itself. 



1 The Republicans had no chance whatever to succeed, hut they helped 
to delay action on the other and more practical question. 



§455] FAILURE OF PRUSSIA. 455 

Frederick William personally was disinclined : he was timid ; 
he was influenced by a sense of honor among kings, so that he 
hesitated to take advantage of Austria's embarrassments witk 
her revolted subjects ; and he felt a growing aversion to the 
Revolution. After some hesitation, he declined the crown. 
Then the German Radicals, in despair, resorted to arms to set 
up a republic. Of course they were promptly crushed,^ and 
the National Assembly vanished in the spring of 1849. 

455. Failure of the Princes under Prussian Leadership. — The 
people's attempt to make a German nation closed with the dis- 
solution of the Frankfort Assembly. But when Frederick 
William declined the crown "bespattered by the blood and 
mire of revolution," he expressed his willingness to assume 
the leadership of a league of princes ; and accordingly, in the 
summer of 1849, despite the protests of Austria and Bavaria, 
twenty-eight states of northern Germany did organize a Prus- 
sian League. 

Several of the princes composing it, however, were half- 
hearted or treacherous, joining only through fear of popular 
risings if they did not. Austria, with Hungary now at her feet 
and with Russia for her ally, organized the South German states 
into a counter-league and proposed the restoration of the old 
Confederation. Schwarzenberg announced bluntly his policy, 
— " First humiliate Prussia, then destroy her." Plainly Aus- 
tria would intervene, at the first opportunity, to put down the 
Prussian League. The opportunity came at once, through a 
quarrel in Hesse between the ruler and his people. Hesse 
was a state of the Prussian League, and the people appealed 
to the Council of the League and to Prussia. The Elector of 
Hesse appealed to Austria. Austria and Prussia both moved 
troops,^ which met on the borders of Bavaria. Shots were 
exchanged: but the Prussian army was not ready; Russia 

1 This was the period when so many German Liberals, like Carl Schurz 
and General Siegel, fled to America. 

2 The Austrian forces were really the army of Bavaria, which was moved 
under Austrian influence, in the name of the old Diet. 



456 CENTRAL EUROPE SINCE 1848. [§456 

showed strong Austrian sympathies; and finally Frederick 
William made ignominious submission in a conference with 
Schwarzenberg at Olmiitz (November 28, 1850). Then Austria 
restored the old Diet, and the German Confederation upon the 
basis of 1815. 

456. Summary : the Apparent Restoration of the Old System 
of 1815 and the Real Gains. — Thus the restoration seemed 
complete. The Revolution had closed in Italy with Novara 
(March, 1849), in Hungary with the downfall of the Eepublic 
(July, 1849), and in Germany with the "humiliation of Olmlitz " 
(December, 1850). A year later it was to close in France with 
Napoleon's coup d'etat. 

Still, there had been some gains.^ European feudalism was 
finally gone., — even from the Austrian realms. In Italy, 
Sardinia kept her new constitution; and her King, Victor 
Emmanuel, recognized his proper mission to be to free and 
unite Italy (§ 459). Prussia, shamed at Olmiitz, had states- 
men who would see that another time she should not be caught 
unprepared.^ Out of these conditions were to be born a new 
Kingdom of Italy and a new German Empire. 

These new births were to be the work of the next twenty 
years (1850-1870). The period was to be one of " blood and 
iron." The making of Germany and Italy was accompanied 
by a series of great wars,^ and ushered in a new period in 
European history. 

EoK Further Reading. — Seignobos, Andrews, Fyffe, and Phillips, as 
before. Murdock's Beconstruction of Europe has a clear account. Head- 
lam's Germany, 1815-1819 ; Henderson's Short History of Germany and 
Bolton King's Italian Unity are excellent for their respective fields. 

Exercise. — Review §§ 414-428 and 452-456, to get a view of the 1848 
movements in France and the rest of Europe. 

1 Read especially Andrews' Modern Europe, I, 444-448. 

2 The years just following Olmiitz, it is true, were among the least promis- 
ing in all Prussian history. But the humiliation had done its work, and the 
results were to show ten years later (§§ 464 ff.). 

3 Some of these wars have been touched upon in the chapter on France. 



§457] ITALY TO 1815 — HISTORICAL REVIEW. 457 

II. THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY. 

457. Historical Review to 1815. — Through, the Middle Ages, 
enthusiastic Italians like Dante and Savonarola had dreamed 
of national unity, and some of the great popes had adopted the 
union of the peninsula under papal leadership as a political 
program. No progress was made, however, imtil about 1800. 
The proclamations of Napoleon I in his Italian campaigns 
(§ 352), promising liberty and independence, again awoke hope 
in Italian hearts. Some consolidation, too, was accomplished ; 
and, though the various " republics," set up under the Direc- 
tory, were short-lived, some advance was made in civil liberty 
(§§ 352, 360 b). Then, when the final coalition was struggling 
with Napoleon, in 1813 and 1814, the generals of the Allies 
appealed to the Italian populations with glowing promises. An 
English force landed at Genoa, with its flag inscribed " Italian 
Liberty and Independence " ; and Austrian proclamations 
announced : — • 

We come to you as liberators. Long have you groaned beneath 
oppression. You shall be an independent nation. ... Do not fear that 
under new masters you will be forced back into the old conditions. No, 
Italians, this is not the purpose of the Allies. Your independence is 
among the causes of the war, — that you may become a single nation . . . 
free from the dominance of foreigners. 

These pledges were shamefully ignored at the Congress of 
Vienna in 1815. Even the Napoleonic improvements were 
undone, and medieval conditions were restored. Lonibardy and 
Venetia became Austrian provinces, and most of the rest of the 
peninsula was handed over to Austrian influence. Bourbon rule 
was restored in the south over the Kingdom of the Two Sici- 
lies, where the King pledged himself to allow no institutions 
more liberal than those permitted by Austria in her districts.' 
Dukes, dependent upon Austria, were set up in Tuscany, 
Modena, and Parma. Between these duchies and Naples lay 
the old Papal States, now restored to clerical rule and in close 
sympathy with Austria. In the northwest the Kingdom of 



458 



UNIFICATION OF ITALY, 1850-1870. 



[§458 



Sardinia (Piedmont, Savoy, Genoa, and Sardinia) was given 
back to its native line of nionarehs, to whom the people were 
loyally attached; but even in this state — the hope of Italy 
— the government until 1848 was a mere military despotism. 
No Italian state had a constitution. From Eome south, the 
country was infested with brigands. Such political life as 
existed was to be found only in secret societies, "Italy," said 
Metternich, "is a mere geographical expression." 

458. Three Periods of Revolution: 1820, 1830, 1848. — The 
story of the Italian revolutions of 1820 and of the interven- 
tion of the Holy Alliance has already been told (§§ 394-396). 
In 1830, after the success of Greece and of the July Revolution 
in Paris, new revolutions broke out in the Papal States and in 
the small duchies, but these movements also were soon sup- 
pressed by Austria. 

The next ten years are famous for the organization of 
" Young Italy " by Mazzini. Mazzini Avas a Genoese lawyer 

and a revolutionary enthusiast, who 
was to play in freeing Italy a part 
». corresponding somewhat to that 

taken by Garrison and Phillips in 
preparing for our American Civil 
War. His mission was to create a 
great moral enthusiasm. His words 
and writings worked wonderfully 
upon the younger Italians of the 
educated classes, and his Society of 
Young Italy replaced the older Car- 
bonari (§ 394). Young Italy had 
for its program a united Italian 
Republic. The ideals were noble 
and lofty, but the methods of the Society were stained by 
various plots for assassination. 

Still, the idea of a free and united Italy constantly gained 
strength, until even some of the rulers became imbued with it. 
In 1846, at the election of a new pope, the Austrian candidate 




Mazzini. 



§459] VICTOK EMMANUEL AND CAVOUR. 459 

was rejected and the Italian cardinals chose Pius IX, a liberal 
Italian. Many Italians hoped that this potentate would real- 
ize ancient dreams and put himself at the head of a federation 
of Italy ; and, for a time, Pius did seem ready to take up this 
work. In 1846 and 1847 he granted many reforms in the Papal 
States ; and when the revolutions of 1848 broke out in Italy, 
beginning in Naples in January, he refused to permit Austrian 
troops to pass through his territory, — the only land route to 
Naples. But it soon became apparent that he was unwilling 
to quarrel decisively with Austria ; and leadership in the criti- 
cal struggle passed to Piedmont. The story of Italy in 1848 
has been told (§§ 452 ff.)„ In 1820-1821, the extremities of the 
peninsula had been convulsed ; in 1830, the middle states ; in 
1848, there was no foot of Italian ground not shaken. The 
movement failed ; but it revealed the fact that " United Italy," 
once a dream of scattered enthusiasts, was at last a passionate 
faith in the hearts of a whole people, and it showed one state 
willing to risk annihilation to carry on the work. From this 
time, the making of Italy is the history of Piedmont. 

459. Victor Emmanuel and Cavour. — The night after the 
defeat of Novara (§ 453), Charles Albert abdicated, and Victor 
Emmanuel II became King of Sardinia. The young prince 
was an intense Italian patriot, and a popular story tells how, 
as he rallied his shattered regiment at the close of the fatal 
day of Novara and withdrew sullenly from the field, he shook 
his clenched fist at the Austrian ranks with the vow, ''By the 
Almighty, my Italy yet shall be ! " 

The new King was at once called upon to stand a sharp test. 
Sardinia had been completely crushed; and victorious Austria 
insisted that Victor Emmanuel should abolish the constitution 
recently given to his country (§ 452). In that event, Austria 
offered easy terms, and promised military support against any 
revolt. At the same time the obstinate and inexperienced 
Sardinian Parliament was embarrassing the King by foolish 
opposition. But Victor Emmanuel refused the Austrian bribe, 
declaring indeed that he would rather lose his crown. In 



460 



UNIFICATION OF ITALY, 1850-1870. 



[§459 



consequence, lie had to submit to severe terms ; bat a frank 
appeal to liis people gave him a new loyal Parliament, which 
ratified the peace, and his conduct won him the title of " the 
Honest King." 

Then, for several years, the King and his great minister, 
Cavour, bent all energies to strengthening Sardinia for another 

struggle and to securing 
allies outside Italy. Vic- 
tor Emmanuel was essen- 
tially a soldier. Cavour 
was the statesman whose 
brain was to guide the 
making of Italy. The 
King's part was loyally 
and steadily to support 
him. Exiles and fugitive 
Liberals from other Italian 
states were welcomed at 
the Sardinian court and 
were often given high of- 
fice there, so that the 
government seemed to be- 
long to the whole penin- 
sula; and betvv^een 1851 
and 1859 Cavour carried 
through the Parliament 
many economic, military, and social reforms.^ Closer trade 
relations with England and France were adopted, chiefly in 
order to awaken the interest of those countries ; and in 1854 
Cavour sent a small but excellent Sardinian army to assist the 
allies against Eussia in the Crimean War (§ 439). 




Victor Emmanuel II. 



1 In this last work, the government came into conflict with the church. 
Great numbers of the superabundant monasteries were closed, and the eccle- 
siastical courts, with tlieir medieval jurisdiction, were abolished; but the 
church was left to manage its own affairs in its own way. Cavour's motto 
was, " A free church in a free state." 



460] 



THE WAES OF 1854 AND 1859. 



461 



Mazzini called this action a monstrous moral degradation ; and many 
Liberals, unable to understand Cavour's policy, condemned it bitterly as 
a political blunder and a crime. The policy had two justifications, 

a. The Crimean War, unnecessary as it was, was, after all, in a way a 
defiance of despotic Russia by more liberal France and England.^ Italy 
had special reason to join in this hostile feeling toward Russia : the Tsar had 
been strongly opposed to the liberal movements of 1848 ; he had helped 
to crush Hungary, virtually an ally of Sardinia in the war of that period ; 
and he had even declined to recognize the accession of Victor Emmanuel. 

b. Cavour wished to show Europe that Sardinia was a military power, 
and to secure for her a place in the councils of Europe, so as to obtain 
foreign intervention for Italy against Austria. 

This second reason, of course, was the real motive. The first argu- 
ment was at best only an excuse. " It is interesting to know that the army 
felt the motive and its importance, though 

liberal statesmen did not. Said an Italian ~ - - ^ 

officer to the soldiers digging in the trenches 
before Sebastopol, " Of this mud our Italy 
is to be made." 

Possibly the action of Cavour in joining 
in such a war may lack full justification to 
the strict moralist ; but at all events, it 
was infinitely less wrong than the policy 
by which Bismarck was soon to make a 
new Germany, and it was to be trium- 
phant over greater difficulties even than 
beset that statesman. 

At the Congress of Paris in 1856, 
Cavour's policy bore fruit. Cavour Cavour. 

sat there on full equality with the 

representatives of the Great Powers, and, despite Austria's 
protests, he secured attention for a strong statement of the 
needs of Italy and of her claim upon Europe. Upon all minds 
it was forcefully impressed that Italian unrest could never cease 
so long as Austria remained in the peninsxda. 

460. First Step in the Growth of Sardinia into Italy : Annexa- 
tion of Lombardy. — Three years later, this patient diplomatic 




1 This is the explanation in part of the tone of Tennyson's Maud, in the 
passages where this war is mentioned. 



462 UNIFICATION OF ITALY, 1850-1870. [§461 

game was won. Cavour drew Louis Napoleon into a secret 
alliance. The exact terms are not known ; but, probably in re- 
turn for a pledge of JSTice and Savoy (§ 429) and for a marriage 
alliance,^ Napoleon promised to come to the aid of Sardinia 
if that Power could provoke Austria into beginning a war. 
Austria was easily inveigled into the attack. Then ISTapoleon 
entered Italy, declaring his ]pui'pose to free it from the Alps 
to the Adriatic; and the victories of Magenta and Solferino 
(§ 429) drove Austria forever out of Lombardy, which was 
promptly incor|)orated into Sardinia. This ivas the first step in 
the expansion of Sardinia into Italy. The population of the 
growing state had risen at a stroke from five millions to eight. 

Venetia remained in Austria's hands, but Napoleon suddenly 
made peace. Possibly he had reason to fear Prussian inter- 
ference if the war continued. But the Italians felt that they 
had been betrayed, and probably they were right. Napoleon 
had intended a federation of Italy, perhaps in four states, under 
the Pope's presidency ; but the movement for annexation of all 
Italy to Sardinia was gaining ground fast, and he had no wish 
to see Italy one strong, consolidated nation. 

461. The Second Step : Annexation of the Duchies by Plebis- 
cites. — Despite the bitter disappointment of Italy at the 
peace, it soon became apparent that more had been accom- 
plished than the mere freeing of Lombardy. At the beginning 
of the war, the peoples of the duchies had driven out their 
dukes ^ and set up provisional governments, in order to join 
Sardinia. At the peace. Napoleon had promised Austria that 
the dukes should be restored. He had stipulated, however, 
that Austria should not use force against the duchies ; and 
the people now refused to receive back their old rulers, insist- 
ing instead upon incorporation with Sardinia. For eight 
months this situation continued, while Cavour played a second 
delicate diplomatic game with Napoleon. Finally it became 

1 Victor Emmanuel was persuaded to sacrifice his young daughter hy giving 
her in marriage to the dissolute Prince Napoleon, a relative of Louis Napoleon. 

2 Dependents of Austria; see § 457. 



§ 462] ANNEXATIONS TO SARDINIA. 463 

evident that only a foreign army could again place the dukes 
upon their thrones, and JSTapoleou was persuaded to leave the 
matter to a plebiscite, his favorite device in France. Then in 
March, 1860, the three duchies (Parma, Modena, and Tuscany) 
by almost unanimous votes ^ declared again for annexation. 
Tliis tvas the second step in expansion. Sardinia was enlarged 
once more by one-third, and had now become a state of eleven 
million people. 

462. The Third Step: Garibaldi's Expedition and the Annexa- 
tion of the Two Sicilies and of Part of the Papal States. — The 
new state now comprised all Italy 
north of the Papal districts, except 
Venetia ; but the impulse to annex- 
ation was not yet exhausted. The 
next advance was due in its begin- 
nings to Garibaldi, a famous Repub- 
lican soldier, who had now given 
his allegiance loyally to Victor Em- 
manuel. In May, 1860, Garibaldi 
sailed from Genoa with a thousand 
fellow-adventurers, to arouse rebel- 
lion in Sicily. Cavour secretly 

favored the expedition, though he Garibaldi. 

thought it needful to make a show 

of trying to stop it.^ Garibaldi landed safely in Sicily and 
won the island almost without bloodshed. Crossing to the 
mainland he easily occupied Naples also, while the Bourbon 
King tied. 

Obeying a popular demand. Garibaldi proclaimed Victor 
Emmanuel "King of Italy," and then he planned to seize 

1- In Tuscany the vote stood 366,571 to 14,925 ; and this was the largest 
adverse vote. 

2 It is said that Cavour secretly furnished guns and money. When the 
expedition was under way, Cavour issued a diplomatic note expressing his 
regret ; hut the admiral of the Sardinian fleet says that he received instruc- 
tions, which, while ambiguous, really meant that he should protect Garibaldi 
from the Neapolitan navy. 




464 UNIFICATION OF ITALY, 1850-1870. [§ 463 

Rome. Such a move would have brought on intervention from 
both Austria and France, and would have put at hazard all 
that had been gained. Cavour was forced to hurried action. 
An understanding was reached with Napoleon; and Victor 
Emmanuel with the Sardinian army moved south, occupying 
Naples and checking Garibaldi's mad march, Rome and the 
surrounding territory was left to the Pope ; but the Marches 
and Umbria (the eastern part of the Papal States) were allowed, 
with the Kingdom of Naples, to vote on the question of annex- 
ation to Sardinia. The vote was even more unanimous than 
that in the duchies had been. 

These additions made the third step in the eoqmnsion of Sar- 
dinia into Italy. The new state now comprised all the penin- 
sula except Rome and Venetia; and it reached continuously 
from the Alps to Sicily. This time the population was raised 
from eleven to twenty-two millions. In February, 1861, the 
first Italian Parliament met at Turin and enthusiastically con- 
firmed the establishment of the " Kingdom of Italy." Cavour's 
statesmanship was triumphant. The Italy he had labored for 
was made, and in this first Parliament of the new nation an 
opposition party to the great minister hardly raised its head. 
Five months later, Cavour was dead. His achievements rank 
as perhaps the most marvelous in all modern statesmanship. 

463. Fourth and Fifth Steps: Venetia and Rome (i866 and 1870). — 

The acquisition of the two remaining provinces was to be intertwined with 
the making of Germany (§§ 467 ff.). Here we need only note that Italy 
joined Prussia in war against Austria in 1866, and received Venetia as her 
reward. Then in 1870, when the Franco-Prussian war began, Napoleon 
recalled the French troops from Rome, and, despite the vehement protest 
of the Pope, Italy quietly took possession of her ancient capital (§ 490). 

For Fdrthke Reading. — Bolton King's Italian Unity is the best 
single work. Good accounts will be found in Probyn's Italy, Bolton 
King's Mazzini, Dicey's Victor Emmanuel, or Cesaresco's Cavour. 
Andrews, Seignobos, Phillips, Fyffe, and Murdock all contain brief treat- 
ments. 

Special Repokt. — Garibaldi's life. 




465 



466 UNIFICATION OF GERMANY, 1850-1871. [§464 

III. THE UNIFICATION OF GERMANY. 

464. "William I of Prussia, and the Army. — In Germany the 
years from 1850 to 1861 were barren of political results. It 
had become plain that the only nucleus for a German nation 
was Prussia, but from Prussia nothing could be expected as 
long as Frederick William IV reigned. In 1861 that prince 
was succeeded by his brother, William I. ' The preceding 
eleven years had seen the making of Italy : the next ten were 
to see the making of Germany, — and incidentally the round- 
ing out of Italy. 

William I, destined to become the most revered of German 
kings, was the prince who had been banished for a time in 
1848 to satisfy the Liberals (§ 454). That party hated him 
for his open opposition to political reform, and they had nick- 
named him " Prince Cartridge." He was a Conservative of 
the old school, and he had bitterly opposed the mild constitu- 
tional concessions of his brother ; but he was also a patriot to 
the core. He tingled with indignation at the humiliation of 
Olmlitz; and he was determined that Prussia should never 
again have to suffer such disgrace. He hoped, too, with all 
his heart, for German unity ; and he believed that this unity 
could be made only by force, and only after the expulsion of 
Austria from Germany. He had been known mainly as a brave 
soldier and an Ultra-conservative, but he was to prove a strong, 
sagacious, practical, statesmanlike sovereign, and a larger fac- 
tor in uniting Germany than Victor Emmanuel had been in 
making Italy. 

The Prussian army differed from all others in Europe. 
Elsewhere the armies were of the old class, — standing bodies 
of mercenaries and professional soldiers, reenforced at need 
by raw, undisciplined levies from the population. The Napo- 
leonic wars had resulted in a different system for Prussia. 



1 William had already been regent for two years. Frederick William had 
become hopelessly insane in 1859. 



§465] WILLIAM I AND BISMAECK. 467 

In 1807, after Jena, in order to keep Prussia helpless, ISTapo- 
leon had required her to reduce her army to forty-two thousand 
men. The Prussian government, however, had evaded Napo- 
leon's purpose, by passing fresh bodies of Prussians through 
the regiments at short intervals, — dismissing a part of each 
regiment after two years' service and filling the places with 
-new levies, who in turn took on regular military discipline, 
while those who had passed out Avere held as a reserve. After 
the Napoleonic wars were over, Prussia retained this system. 
The design was to make the entire male population a trained 
army ; but until the time of William I the plan had not been 
fully followed up. Since 1815, population had doubled, but the 
army had been left upon the basis of that period. No arrange- 
ments had been made for organizing new regiments ; and so 
twenty-five thousand men each year reached military age with- 
out being summoned into the ranks. King William's first 
efforts were directed to correct this condition by increasing 
the number of regiments and by rearranging the term of 
service. 

To do these things required a large increase in taxes. But 
the Prussian Parliament was jealous of military power in the 
hands of a sovereign so hostile to constitutional liberty, and 
it resolutely refused the needed grants of money. Then 
William found a minister to carry out his will. Parliament 
or no. This man, who was to be the German Cavour, was 
Otto von Bismarck. 

465. Bismarck and the Parliament. — Thirteen years earlier, 
Count Bismarck had been known as a grim and violent leader 
of the ''Junkers," the extreme conservative party, made 
up of young landed aristocrats. He held at that time, in 
words at least, to the doctrine of the divine right of kings ; 
and now, after the conflict between the King and Parliament, 
when Bismarck was announced as the head of a new ministry, 
the Liberals prophesied a coup d'etat. Something like a coup 
cVetat did take place. The Prussian constitution declared 
that the ministers must be " responsible " to the Landtag or 



468 UNIFICATION OF GERMANY, 1850-1871. [§ 465 

Parliament ; but this did not mean responsible in the modern 
English sense : that is, it did not mean that they must resign 
if outvoted, but only that they might be held to account for 
their actions. The Prussian Parliament consisted of a chamber 
of representatives and an upper house of nobles. Bismarck 
now invented the novel theory, that, if the two houses did not 
agree, the King and the upper house could govern and even 
raise taxes, without the consent of the representative chamber ; 
and for four years he ruled and collected taxes without a legal 
budget. 

Over and over again, the Landtag demanded Bismarck's 
dismissal, and many violent scenes took place. The Liberals 
threatened to hang him, — as very probably they would have 
done if power had fallen to them by another revolution,^ — 
and, unable to do that, they challenged him repeatedly to 
duels. Bismarck in turn railed at the Liberals contemptuously 
as "mere pedants," and told them bluntly that the making of 
Germany was to be " a matter not of speechifying and parlia- 
mentary majorities, but of blood and iron " ; and he grimly went 
on, muzzling the press, bullying or dissolving Parliaments, 
and overriding the national will roughshod. Meantime, the 
army was greatly augmented and many times multiplied in 
efi&ciency. First of any large army, it was supplied with the 
new invention of breech-loading, repeating rifles, instead of the 
old-fashioned muzzle-loaders, and it was made the most per- 
fectly organized military machine in Europe. 

From the first, Bismarck had intended that this recon- 
structed army should expel Austria from Germany and force 
the princes of the rest of Germany into a true national union. 
Of course it had not been possible for him to avow his pur- 
pose; but time was growing precious, and he began to look 
anxiously for a chance to use his new tool. By a series of 
master-strokes of unscrupulous and daring diplomacy, he 



1 The Liberals were fond of comparing the Klug and Bismarck to Charles J 
of England and Strafford (§243). 



§466] BISMARCK'S THREE GREAT WARS. 469 

brought on three wars in the next seven years, — the Danish 
War (1864), the Six Weeks' War with Austria (1866), and 
the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). Out of these war- 
clouds emerged a new Germany. 

466. The Schleswig-Holstein Question and the Danish War. — The 

southern part of the Danish peninsula was not included in the Kingdom 
of Denmark, hut was known as the Duchy of Schleswig. Adjoining it, 
at the base of the peninsula, lay the Duchy of Holstein. Schleswig was 
partly Danish, partly German in character ; Holstein was almost wholly 
German. For centuries the duchies had experienced varying political 
fortunes, — sometimes Danish possessions, sometimes German, some- 
times divided between the two countries, — but the Congress of Vienna had 
left them both attached to the Danish crown. They were not, however, 
made part of Denmark; the union was purely "personal"; that is, 
the King of Denmark was also Duke in Schleswig-Holstein. Holstein, 
indeed, was one of the states of tlie Germanic Confederation. 

The Danes, of course, tried to consolidate the duchies with Denmark 
and to introduce the l])anish law and language. The German population 
resisted, and rose gallantly in attempt after attempt at independence. 
Naturally, the sympathies of the German race went out to tliem in their 
aspii-ations for nationality ; and for many years the Schleswig-Holstein 
Question had been the danger-point in European politics. ^ In 1863, the 
crisis became acute. The King of Denmark died without direct male 
heirs. The new Danish King inherited the crown through a woman, but 
the law of the duchies did not recognize succession through females. The 
Danes, of course, claimed that their new King was the ruler of the duch- 
ies also ; but those states called to their ducal throne a petty German 
prince who was the heir under their law. The Diet of the German Con- 
federacy sanctioned this position ; but the Congress of Vienna had cer- 
tainly intended the union with Denmark to be permanent, and, after this 
coming complication had been clearly foreseen, the Danish claim had 
been again confirmed, in 18.53, by a Congress of the Powers at London. 

The new Danish king complicated matters still further by publishing 
a new constitution for Schleswig, incorporating it in Denmark. Then, 
Bismarck stepped in, ignoring all the conflicting claims, to secure the 

1 Lord Palmerston, the great English Prime Minister, had called it "the 
match that would yet set Europe on fire," and Metternich had styled it 
" the bone on which the Germans whet their teeth." The subject has become 
proverbial for obscurity. Good brief accounts are to be found in Headlam's 
Bismarck and in Munro Smith's Bismarck. 



470 UNIFICATION OF GERMANY, 1850-1871. [§ 467 

duchies for Prussia, who had no claim at all. The scheme would have 
been impossible to a scrupulous statesman, and hopeless to a less daunt- 
less one. Bismarck, however, felt no moral hesitation, and he had 
skillfully guarded against interference by the Powers. Russia he had 
conciliated by aiding her a few months before to put down a Polish re- 
bellion, so that, in gratitude, the Tsar was willing to give him a free 
hand ; Napoleon III would not interfere because, as Bismarck afterward 
said, he " had been allowed to deceive himself " into thinking that France 
would be permitted to annex Rhine territory to "indemnify" her for 
Prussia's proposed gain ; England would not fight unsupported ; and 
Austria, the natural ally of Denmark,i Bismarck had made his accom- 
plice. In 1864, the Prussian and Austrian armies entered the duchies. 
Despite the gallant resistance of the Danes, the war was quickly con- 
cluded, and the fate of the two duchies was left to be. fixed by the con- 
querors. 

467. The Six Weeks' "War with Austria. — Bismarck intended 
next to force Austria into war over the division of the spoils, 
and so attain his great end of excluding her from German 
affairs. He virtually claimed both duchies for Prussia, and, 
though at Austria's indignant protest a system of joint pro- 
tection was temporarily arranged, it was plain that the Prus- 
sian minister meant to secure all the booty for his country. 

King William, however, had scruples. He was quite will- 
ing to fight Austria, but he wanted a just cause. Bismarck 
was driven to new wiles in order to gain William's approval. 
Strangely enough, Austria was now trying the experiment of 
constitutional government (§ 491), and her administration in 
Holstein was liberal, while Prussia's military rule in Schles- 
wig was despotic. The Holsteiners held public meetings 
to express sympathy for their oppressed fellow-subjects, and 
so gave Bismarck a chance to arouse William's prejudices 
against Austria, by representing her as a source of revolu- 
tionary danger. The feeling between the two states became 
bitter. Bismarck drcAV Italy into an alliance by which that 
country promised to join in an attack upon Austria, in order 



1 Of course, it was to Austria's interest to keep Denmark as strong as 
possible, in order to check Prussian aggression. 



§468] THE NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION. 471 

to secure Venetia. Negotiations dragged on, however, and 
the Austrian government showed itself so conciliatory, that 
it won the sympathy of the other German rulers. Bismarck 
continued to make demands which he knew could not be 
granted ; and when summoned by the Diet to refer the matters 
in dispute to that body (as indeed the constitution of the 
Confederation required), he replied by a proposal for a 
wholly new confederation which should exclude Austria. The 
Diet rejected the proposition, and prepared for war against 
Prussia as "the wanton disturber of the national peace." 
Then, June 14, 1866, war was declared between Austria and 
Prussia. 

There followed a marvelous display of military energy. 
Except for a few small states north of the Main, all Germany 
adhered to Austria ; but in three days, Prussia had occupied 
Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony ; and July 4, Austria was over- 
thrown at Sadoiva,^ in Bohemia, and lay at the mercy of the 
conqueror. 

468. The Peace of Prague : Prussian Preponderance in Germany ; 
the North German Confederation. — Out of the Six Weeks' War 
came a real German State such as had never before been 
seen, except faintly in the twelfth century. This result was 
embodied in the Peace of Prague and the other treaties which 
closed the war. These treaties gave Venetia to Italy (§ 463) 
and required the payment of war indemnities by Austria and 
her South German allies ; ^ but the really significant provisions 
lay (1) in the augmentation of Prussia and (2) in the reorganiza- 
tion of Germany. 

a. Prussia annexed Hesse, Hanover, Nassau, and the former 
free city of Frankfort, besides the Schleswig-Holstein duchies 
with the magnificent harbor of Kiel. These acquisitions 

^ Sadowa, or Koniggratz, is one of the greatest battles in history, both 
from its significance and from the size of the armies engaged- Nearly a half- 
million men stood in the opposing lines. 

2 The South German states were let oft easily, however, because Bismarck 
wished to draw them soon into friendly relations with Prussia. Cf. § 469. 



472 UNIFICATION OF GERMANY, 1850-1871. [§469 

enlarged Prussia by one half, making a state of thirty millions 
of people, with overwhelming preponderance in Germany.^ 

b. Austria definitely withdrew from German affairs, and the 
other German states were reorganized. The Confederation of 
1815 was replaced by two federations. The first is known as 
The North German Federation. This union was placed under 
Prussian presidency. It was not a loose league like the old 
Confederacy, but a true federal state, with essentially the same 
constitution as the present German Empire, which replaced it 
four years later (§ 471). The second federation was to include 
the four South German states, — Bavaria, "Wurtemberg, Hesse- 
Darmstadt, and Baden. This union was intended to be simi- 
lar to the old Confederacy of 1815 (of which, indeed, it was a 
temporary survival), but no organization was really effected 
(§ 470). 

469. Steps toward Further Union. — As soon as Bismarck's 
determination to fight Austria had become plain, the liberal 
opposition in Prussia had been hushed ; and after Sadowa he 
found himself the idol of the Prussian people, while the Land- 
tag enthusiastically passed the act of indemnity he requested 
for his previous illegal acts. This hearty support made it 
easier for him to complete his work. The South German 
states were yet to be brought into the more complete North 
German union ; and this consummation was secured by Bis- 
marck through the third of his wars, — the contest with France 
in 1870-1871. 

Before the war, however, two important steps toward union 
were taken. (1) In 1868, a Customs Parliament, representing 
all Germany, north and south alike, organized a national 



1 AVhen Prussia became a kingdom, in 1701, her population was about one 
and a half millions. Frederick II received the state with a population of two 
and a half millions, and it was doubled during his reign. By 1815, it had 
been doubled once more. In the next fifty years, 1815-1866, without terri- 
torial growth, the population had risen from ten to twenty millions. The 
Six Weeks' War added a half more. Compare the map opposite with that on 
page 297. 



474 UNIFICATION OF GERMANY, 1850-1871. [§470 

Customs Union, and so joined all Germans into one nation 
commercially.-' (2) Secret treaties bound the South German 
states to Prussia in a military league against France. 

This last arrangement was a diplomatic victory for Bismarck 
over Kapoleon III. Napoleon had been outwitted in both 
the preceding wars. After the Danish war, he had failed to 
get Belgium or Luxemburg, one of which he had expected 
Prussia to help him secure ; but when the Six Weeks' War 
drew on, he thought his chance had come. France would 
remain neutral at first, but would be ready to strike, and at 
the critical moment she would step in and save the vanquished. 
Napoleon did not doubt that the vanquished would be Prussia ; 
and, as the price of his protection, he expected to compel Prus- 
sia to help him to the coveted Rhine territory. But the war 
was over, and over the other way, before the French armies 
were ready to act. Napoleon had lost his chance; but he then 
weakly tried negotiation. He suggested secretly to Bismarck, 
that, to offset Prussia's annexations, France be allowed to annex 
part of Bavaria (one of Prussia's opponents in the war), in 
which case France would allow Bismarck to remodel Germany 
at will. Bismarck did not need the consent of France. In- 
deed, war with France was the next move decided on in his 
game,^ and this proposal simply delivered Napoleon into his 
hands : he revealed it to the South German states, and so terri- 
fied them into secret but hearty alliance with Prussia. 

470. The Franco-Prussian War : the German Empire. — The 
French people looked with rage upon the growth of a German 
nation upon their frontier, and were clamoring for war in order 
to undo it. Bismarck saw that a successful war with France 

1 This was the outgrowth of a Prussian Customs Union, which had been 
growing among the North German states for over forty years. "All Ger- 
many," of course, no longer included Austria. This Customs Parliament was 
chosen by manhood suffrage, and indeed consisted of the regular Reichsrath 
of the North German Confederation, in special session, Math delegates from 
the South German states added to it. 

2 Bismarck wrote afterwards, "That a war with France would succeed 
that with Austria lay in the logic of history." 



§470] 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 



475 



would fuse the two German federations; and this war he 
hurried on with characteristic craft, for which the envy and 
military vanity of France and the desperation of Napoleon's 
government gave him only too much opportunity. 

The immediate occasion grew out of a proposal of tlie Spaniards to 
place upon their throne" Leopold of HohenzoUern, a German prince and a 
distant relative of King Wil- 
liam of Prussia. Napoleon 
called upon William to pre- 
vent this, urging that such 
augmentation of HohenzoUern 
power would be dangerous to 
the peace of Europe. Offi- 
cially William declined to in- 
terfere ; but privately he did 
induce his relative to decline 
'the offered crown. Napoleon, 
however, was bent upon hu- 
miliating William ; and the 
French ambassador insisted 
that William should give a 
definite pledge that the offer, 
if renewed, would not be ac- 
cepted. King William very 
properly declined to do this ; 
but his refusal, though firm, 
was so courteous that there was 
no cause for offense. That 

night, however, Bismarck sent out reports of the interview so colored as 
to represent that the King had insulted the French envoy.^ As Bismarck 
hoped, France took fire, and war was promptly declared. 

Twelve days after the declaration of war, Germany had put 
one and a quarter million of trained troops into the field 
and had massed most of them on the Rhine. The world had 
never seen such marvelous perfection of military preparation. 
As Carlyle wrote, "It took away the breath of Europe." 
August 2 the Emperor took command at Mainz. September 2 

1 Anderson's Constitutions and Documents gives in parallel columns the 
King's original " Ems Dispatch " and Bismarck's version of it. 




Bismarck. 




476 



§471] 



THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 



477 



the only important French army in the field was defeated and 
captured at Sedan, and Napoleon was a prisoner. 

The story of the later course of the war has already been 
told (§ 433). What we care to note here is the effect upon 
Germany. The popular enthusiasm of the South Germans 
for the war, and for Prussia as the champion for Germany, 
led rapidly to a series of 
treaties by which the South 
German states ^ entered 
the North German Feder- 
ation. Then the King of 
Bavaria and other German 
rulers invited William I 
to take the title of German 
Emperor; and, on Janu- 
ary 18, while the siege of 
Paris was still in progress, 
in the ancient palace of 
the French kings at Ver- 
sailles, William formally 
assumed that name. A 
few months later, a Parlia- 
ment of all Germany rati- 
fied a constitution for the 
new German Empire. 

471. The Moral Question. 

— The story of the making of 
Germany shows plainly enough 
that the process was one not 

only of "blood and iron," but also of fraud and falsehood. It is hard to 
tell the story of such gigantic and successful audacity and craft without 
seeming to glorify it. It is to be remembered, of course, that Bismarck 
did not work for personal or low ends, nor for merely Prussian ends, but 
that he was inspired by a true and broad patriotism. Only through 




William I of Prussia. 



1 Those states secured some slight concessions not enjoyed by most of the 
states in the union. 



478 THE GEEMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§472 

such a national union as he accomplished could the German people reach 
to the better elements in modern life. At the same time, Bismarck's 
success has tended, too probably, to lower the tone of international 
morality ; and his policy of fraud and violence has left to Germany a 
legacy of burning questions which will grieve it long. The rule of the 
drill-sergeant and of the police officer in modern Germany, the hostility 
to the Empire felt by the Danes of Schleswig and the French of Alsace- 
Lorraine, the bitter jealousy between Prussia and Bavaria, and the 
immense armies of all Europe are among the results of his policy. It is 
too early yet to say that that policy is truly victorious. (Cf. §§ 479-481, 
483, 487.) 

For Fuether Reading. — Seignobos, Phillips, Andrews, Fyffe, Hen- 
derson, as before. Murdock's Beconstruction gives a readable account 
of this period. Headlam's Bismarck^ and his Germany, 1815-1889, and 
Munroe-Smith's Bismarck, are excellent and scholarly. 

IV. GERMANY SINCE 1871. 
A. The Constitution. 

472. A Federal State made up of Monarchic Units. — The Ger- 
manic Confederation (1815-1867) was a confederacy of sover- 
eign states, a union even weaker than that of our American 
states under our Articles of Confederation. The present Ger- 
man Empire is a true federal state, like our present union. 
It has this peculiarity, however : it is the only strong federal 
state in history made up of monarchies. Of the twenty-five 
states composing the Empire, four are kingdoms (Prussia, 
Bavaria, Saxony, Wurtemberg) ; eighteen more are duchies, 
grand duchies, or principalities ; and only three are republi- 
can in character, — the city -republics, Bremen, Hamburg, and 
Llibeck. 

473. The Emperor is not in theory a ruler, but rather a presi- 
dent of the federation.^ The presidency is hereditary, how- 
ever, in the kings of Prussia.^ 

1 His title was carefully guarded : he is not called " Emperor of Germany," 
but " German Emperor." 

2 Somewhat as if the governor of New York were ex-officio president of 
the United States. 



§475] THE CONSTITUTION. 479 

The Emperor cannot be impeached. He has extensive power of pat- 
ronage, and almost absolute control over foreign relations. He has no veto 
upon imperial legislation, though his overwhelming influence in the Fed- 
eral Council almost amounts to that power (§ 474). His chief authority 
in the Empire comes from the fact that he is master of Prussia. That 
state is larger and more powerful than all the rest of the union put to- 
gether, and its constitution leaves its king almost an absolute monarch 
within its territory. 

474. The Bundesrath. — Tlie sovereignty of the Empire is 
vested in a Federal Council, or Bundesrath. This body con- 
sists of fifty-six delegates appointed by the sovereigns of the 
different states in fixed proportions. Prussia has seventeen; 
seventeen small states have one each; and the other seven 
states have from two to six each. 

The Bundesrath is not a mere upper house of a legislature, 
like our Senate, though it has great control over legislation.^ 
Its powers are executive rather than legislative, and it does 
not go through legislative forms. It looks after the admin- 
istration, prepares most of the measures for the law-making 
body (the Keichstag, § 475), and it has a veto upon all laws 
passed by that body. It has been called the " Diet of the old 
Confederacy, with powers enlarged." 

475. The National Legislature is the Reichstag. It consists 
of one house. The members are elected by manhood suffrage, 
in single districts, like our congressmen, for a term of five 
years. There are three hundred and ninety-seven delegates, 
of which Prussia has two hundred and thirty-six. 

The constitution calls for a periodic reapportionment of representa- 
tives, to suit changes in population : but so far (to 1904) there has been 
none. (The United States, of course, has had three reapportionments of 
congressmen within this period.) The following table shows the distribu- 
tion of representatives in the Reichstag. The eleven states not named have 
one representative each. 

1 The Bundesrath can be said to be part of the legislature only in the sense 
in which Elizabeth or Henry VIII of England might have been called part of 
the English legislature, or an American president (for his veto power) part of 
the American legislature. 



480 THE GERMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§ 476 

Prussia . . 236 Hesse 9 Saxe- Weimar , 3 

Bavaria . . 48 Mecklenburg-Sciiwerin 6 Saxe-Meiningen 2 

Saxony . . 23 Oldenburg 3 Saxe-Coburg . . 2 

Wurtemberg 17 Brunswick .... 3 Anhalt .... 2 

Baden . . 14 Hamburg 3 Alsace-Lorraine ^ 15 

The power of the Eeichstag is much less than the American 
student would at first expect in a national legislature. It can 
introduce bills, but they are not likely to receive the approval 
of the Bundesrath unless they were originally submitted from 
that body. Thus, practically, the Reichstag is limited to accept- 
ing or rejecting Bundesrath measures. Even its control over 
taxation is incomplete, because most revenue measures, instead 
of being annual appropriations, are standing laws: that is, once 
passed, they remain in force until changed; and they can be 
changed only with the consent of the Bundesrath. At the 
same time, debates in the Reichstag are highly important as 
expressions of national desires, and they have a special value 
in a country like Germany, where all other methods of expres- 
sion of opinion are subject to rigid police control (§ 481). 

476. The Imperial Ministry is appointed by the Emperor. 
Its most important member is the Chancellor. Ministers are 
declared responsible; but this is in the Prussian, not in the 
English sense. They are not obliged to resign if outvoted in 
the Reichstag. 

477. Amendments to the constitution are made just as ordi- 
nary laws are passed, except that fourteen negative votes in 
the Bundesrath are enough to veto a proposal. Thus the king 
of Prussia alone, or the small states alone, or the South Ger- 
man states alone, can prevent change. 

478. The Constitutions of Prussia and of the Other States. — The 
important elements in the imperial constitution are the Em- 
peror and the Bundesrath; and these depend for their charac- 
ter on the constitutions of the different states. Of these states 
Prussia is the most important. Her population is three-fifths 

1 Alsace is not a state and has no vote in the Bundesrath; it is an " impe- 
rial territory," but it was given representation in the Reichstag in 1874. 



THE GERMAIN EMPIRE 
since 1871 

SCALE OF MILES 



30 40 60 80 100 120 110 ICO 180 200 /^ ) ^ 

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2. Saxe-Coburg-Gotha 

3. ^nxe- Iftfimar 

4. Saze-Altenhurg 

5. Sii are- Jl/rt nina' era 

20 



§ 479] THE GOVERNMENT. /^ |^ 

that of the whole Empire; her king is Emperor; her r( ^ 
sentative in the ministry is usually Chancellor ; and in general 
her military and political system is extended as far as possible 
throughout the Empire. 

The Prussian constitution to-day is the one granted by Fred- 
erick William IV in 1850. In the view of many German writers, 
it maintains the doctrine of divine right, and the royal authority 
is limited only by its own consent. The legislature (Landtag) 
consists of a House of Lords and a House of Eepresentatives. 
All males have a vote in the election of the lower house ; but 
they vote in three orders, in such a way as to give two-thirds 
of the representation to the wealthiest one-sixth of the voters.^ 

The authority of the legislature is limited. The king may 
adjourn or dissolve it, and he keeps an absolute veto. In 
practice he has the initiative in legislation, and the ministry 
is not compelled to resign if outvoted. Prussia and England 
are both constitutional monarchies, but the student must not 
be misled by the likeness of name. They stand at the two 
extremes of such government : England is almost or quite a 
democracy ; Prussia is almost as autocratic as Russia. 

The constitutions of the other states vary in considerable 
degree, but few of them give the representative legislature any 
real control over the administration, as in England or in France. 
Usually, too, the franchise rests upon property qualifications, 
and everywhere the officials come from the aristocratic classes. 
In general, however, South Germany is less military and more 
democratic than Prussia and North Germany. 

B. The Government in Operation. 

479. Paternal Despotism, Police Rule, Militarism. — The Ger- 
man government is honest and frugal, and it is paternal in the 

1 The threefold division is based upon wealth, and the wealthiest class 
(153,808 voters) elect as many representatives as the poorer class (2,591,950 
voters). In the city of Berlin, a rich man's vote counts for that of fifty poor 
men. This applies, of course, to Prussian elections only. In imperial elec- 
tions, manhood suffrage exists. 



482 THE GERMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§480 

extreme. Justice between man and man is easy to obtain; 
land-transfer is cheap; food-adulteration is carefully guarded 
against; the public health is zealously protected. But at the 
same time, alongside this kindly and watchful paternalism, 
there are grievous faults. Germany has been made by vio- 
lence, and the result still shows in the spirit of militarism 
and in the predominance of the methods of the drill-sergeant 
and the policeman. No other state with so high a civilization 
is so infected with these evils. ^ A policeman's evidence in a 
court is equal to that of five independent witnesses and his 
rule is all-pervading. Says a somewhat hostile English critic 
(in the Contemporary Review for February, 1896) : — 

The policeman strolls into youi' house or garden when he likes, much 
as a master enters the class-room to see that all is going on properly. He 
will count the caterpillars in your garden and summon you if he finds too 
many of them. If you go for a bath, he will forbid you to get out of your 
depth, swim you never so strongly. In fine, half schoolmaster, half nurse, 
he will supervise your every action, from the cradle to the grave, with 
a military sternness and inflexibility which robs you of all independence 
and reduces you to the level of a mere plastic item. To live in Germany 
always seems to me like a return to the nursery. 

Even worse is the contemptuous and oftentimes brutal treat- 
ment of civilians by army officers. For years the papers have 
abounded with reports of gross and unprovoked insults, and 
sometimes of violent assaults by officers upon unoffending 
citizens, for which the courts afford no redress. 

480. The Emperors, and their Attitude toward Constitutionalism. 
— At his coronation, William /took the crown from the com- 
munion table, declaring, " The crown comes only from God, and 
I have received it from His hands." William never modified 
this conception of kingship, although he allowed Bismarck to 
coquette with liberalism at times, when that policy suited the 
Chancellor's ends. In an election manifesto of 1882, the 

1 Some writers claim that these features of German society are due to the 
position of Germany, without natural frontiers, between great military states. 
To some extent, this geographical condition may explain the devotion of the 
Germans to their army. 



§480] THE EMPERORS. 483 

Emperor reminded all officials that " tlie duty which you have 
sworn to perform [iu the oath of office] extends to supporting 
the policy of the government at the elections." 

In 1888, William was succeeded by his son, Frederick III. 
Frederick was an admirer of parliamentary government upon 
the English ^ pattern, and he liad long been hostile to Bismarck ; 
but he was suffering from a fatal disease at the time of his 
accession, and his three months' reign brought no change in 
the government. 

William II, the son of Frederick, returned to the principles 
of his grandfather. As a youth, he had been a great admirer 
of Bismarck : but it soon became plain that the two men were 
each too masterful to work together, and in 1890 the Emperor 
curtly dismissed the Chancellor from office. Since that time, 
William II has himself directed the policy of the Empire, and 
he has been a greater force in European politics than any other 
sovereign in Europe. He believes thoroughly in the '' divine 
right " theory, and he has repeatedly stated it ^ in as striking a 

1 Frederick's wife was Victoria, daughter of the great English Queen. 

2 Perhaps the Emperor's most concise statement is the sentence he wrote in 
the Visitors' Book in the Town Hall of Munich, "The will of the king is the 
supreme law." In 1890, in an address to a body of instructors upon the proper 
teaching of history, he told his hearers that they should teach that the French 
Revolution was "an unmitigated crime against God and man." In 1891, in 
an address to a body of military recruits, he said : " You are now my soldiers. 
You have given yourselves to me, body and soul. There is now but one enemy 
for you, and that is my enemy. In these times of socialistic intrigue, it may 
happen that I shall order you to fire upon your brothers or fathers. God save 
us from it ! But in such a case you are bound to obey me without a murmur ! " 
In 1897, the Emperor, in a prepared address, set forth at length his oflfice as 
a "vice-regent of God"; and the same year, his brother Henry, when about 
to set sail for China, in command of a German expedition, used the following 
words in a public address to the Emperor: " Of one thing I can assure Your 
Majesty. Neither fame nor laurels have charm for me. One thing is the aim 
that draws me on : it is to declare in foreign lands the evangel of Your Maj- 
esty's hallowed person, — to preach it to every one who will hear it, and also 
to those who will not hear it. . . . This gospel I have inscribed on my ban- 
ner, and I will inscribe it whithersoever I go." Other illustrations of this 
character can be found in a curious and authentic volume, The Kaiser's 
Speeches, published by Harpers in 1903. 



484 THE GERMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§ 481 

form as it was ever put bj James I of England or Louis XIV 
of France. 

481. Insecurity of Personal Rights. — The imperial constitu- 
tion contains a bill of rights, but the courts have no power to 
declare void an unconstitutional law. The administration, too, 
can appeal cases in which it is interested to administrative 
courts without juries} As a result, trial by jury, freedom of the 
press, freedom of public meetings, and free speech exist only 
in a limited degree.^ To criticise the Emperor in the press, 
ever so lightly, is likely to land the offender in jail for a 
considerable term, through prosecution for Use-majeste. In 
January, 1898, it was reported on good authority that seventy 
German editors were in jail for that offense. 

C. Recent Movements. 

Since the formation of the Empire, the chief features in German devel- 
opment have been the kulturkampf, the determination of the government 
to enlarge the army and navy, the rapid increase in commercial activity, 
an aggressive colonial policy, and the growth of Socialism. The only one 
of these movements which has come tO an end is the kulturkampf ; and 
possibly in that one the peace is only a truce. 

482. The Kulturkampf. — The new Empire had brought to- 
gether Catholic and Protestant state" ; and this contact resulted 
in a serious conflict between chi' \d state. The immediate 
outbreak came in connection ^ous decree of the Vati- 
can Council of 1870, affirmiii e to be infallible in 



1 Read Lowell, Governments and Par^^es, I, 282-285 and 294-297. Russell's 
Social Democracy, 48-50, gives an interesting account of a famous trial of 
Lassalle (§ 485) . 

2 The following anecdote illustrates how limited is the right of public meet- 
ing. In 1897, a landed proprietor gave a harvest festival for his workmen. 
Some fifty in all, they marched to a wood and had a picnic. A few days later 
the proprietor and several of the men were arrested on the charge of having 
held a public meeting without notifying the police. No other fault was 
alleged, but the offenders were sentenced to fines or short terms in jail. The 
treatment of Socialists and others, who systematically oppose the govern- 
ment's policy, will be noted in § 485. 



§482] THE KULTURKAMPF. 485 

matters of faith and morals. The German bishops at the 
Council refused to assent to the new statement of the doctrine, 
and withdrew in a body, but within a year they had for the 
most part fallen into line. Some of the German Catholics, 
however, maintained their position and took the name of Old 
Catholics. This sect was soon attacked vigorously by the 
orthodox bishops. Instructors in the clerical schools who did 
not teach the dogma of infallibility were suspended from their 
offices and excommunicated; teachers in the primary schools 
were dismissed; and the orthodox clergy refused to perform 
the marriage ceremony for Old Catholics. 

Then Bismarck stepped in for the defense of the Old Catho- 
lics ; and apparently he was not altogether sorry for so good 
an occasion to assert the supremacy of the state over the 
church. For some months the conflict raged bitterly ; and, to 
wage it better, Bismarck allied himself with the Liberals 
in Parliament. In May, 1873, a series of laws was passed, 
known later as the '' May Laws " : marriage and all education, 
private and public, were taken from, the church and placed 
under the control of the state ; the Jesuits were expelled ; the 
state assumed control over the education of priests ; and the 
church was forbidden to exclude its own members except with 
government permission. 

The bishops and orthodox clergy formally refused to obey 
these laws. Then Bismarck fell back upon a series of violent 
measures. Priests were deprived of office and were refused 
their salaries, and were even punished by long terms of im- 
prisonment or by exile. The Pope protested, and in 1875 he 
declared that the May Laws ought not to be obeyed. The 
Empire had already withdrawn its ambassador from the papal 
court, and Bismarck had appealed confidently to German 
national feeling in his boast, "We shall not go to Canossa" 
(§ 74). The government now confiscated ecclesiastical salaries 
and took into its OAvn hands all the property and revenues of the 
church, at the same time expelling from Prussia all Catholic 
religious orders. 



■4:86 THE GERMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§ 483 

These measures have been described as having a military- 
character, — " designed to cut off the enemy from his commis- 
sariat and to deprive him of his most active troops." Certainly 
there is a reminder of the " blood and iron " policy in all the 
story ; but such a policy was not suited to internal problems. 
From 1875 to 1879, it is true, the government held its position. 
One-iifth the parishes in Prussia had no clergy; schools and 
seminaries were closed ; chairs of theology in the German uni- 
versities were vacant ; houses of the clergy were raided by the 
police ; and numbers of men of devoted Christian lives and 
broad scholarship languished in prison or in exile. But this 
persecution was ineffective against the heroic resistance of the 
clergy, and it steadily lost favor among the people. A strong 
and growing party in the Reichstag, " the Center,'^ hampered 
all Bismarck's projects; and finally he was forced to make 
terms with it, in order to secure the legislation he desired 
against the Socialists and for tariffs. In 1880, the government 
began its retreat ; and, if it did not " go to Canossa," it aban- 
doned step by step every position it had assumed in the 
quarrel. The chief result of the contest to-day is the large, 
watchful Conservative party, "the Center." 

483. The Prussian Army System (§ 464) has been extended 
all over Germany. The fundamental principle is the universal 
obligation of all adult males to serve. The army is the armed 
nation. At twenty, each man is supposed to enter the ranks 
for two years' active seroice. For four years more he serves in 
the active reserves, with two months each year in camp. This 
takes the soldier to his twenty-seventh year. For twelve years 
more he forms part of the territorial reserve, or army of de- 
fense (Landwehr). The army on a peace footing comprises 
those who are undergoing the two years' service. In case of 
war, this body and the active reserves are ready for offensive 
operations, while the territorial reserves form garrisons and 
guard lines of communication. In case of actiaal invasion, all 
other males between seventeen and forty-five, or the army of 
emergency (Landsturm), are called out. In 1901 the German 



§484] ARMY AND COLONIES. 487 

army on a peace footing counted 580,023 men under arms. 
.In case of war, Germany could put nearly four million veterans 
into the iield. 

This system constitutes an enormous burden ; but tlie Prussian victo- 
ries in 1866 and in 1870 convinced all Europe of its military utility, and 
since 1870 every state in Europe has adopted it, with slight modifications 
as to the number of years' service. Thus Europe is a group of armed 
camps. The tax involved in giving so large a part of each man's best 
years to camp life weighs heavily upon the civilized world. England, re- 
lying on her navy, and the United States, trusting to her position, are the 
only great countries that are now free from it. No doubt, certain good 
results come from the military discipline ; but, on the whole, the present 
European army system is the most woeful and immense waste of energy 
that the world ever saw, and the great problem of the future is to get rid 
of it (§ 594). 

As a matter of fact, it is not possible to bring every man into 
the ranks. Exemption is allowed in Germany to the only son 
of a widow, to theological students, to those weakened by physi- 
cal defects, and in some other cases. Moreover, young men 
who have passed through the higher educational institutions 
are allowed to get off with only one year's service in the ranks. 
As population grows, new legislation is called for, from time 
to time, to create and support new regiments, into which to 
draft the increased number of recruits. In default of such 
legislation, considerable numbers liable to service must escape. 
The contests over the successive '' army bills " have been 
among the liveliest features of the Reichstag history, but so 
far (1904) the government has always had its way. 

484. Trade and Colonies. — The sudden emergence in Central 
Europe of a powerful nation of fifty-six millions of people, 
with the most powerful army in the world, out of fragmentary 
and helpless states, compelled, of course, the recasting of all 
old political alliances (§ 583) ; but it soon appeared that the 
new Germany was to be hardly less a factor in revolutionizing 
trade relations. The old Germany had been essentially an 
agricultural country, and its foreign trade had been of little 
consequence. After 1880, German manufactures, encouraged 



488 THE GERMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§ 484 

by the government, mounted by great leaps, and the label 
"Made in Germany" began to appear on all sorts of articles 
in all parts of the globe. Before 1900 Germany had passed 
all other nations except England and America in manufactures 
and trade, and the economic contest between these three peo- 
ples is growing increasingly close. 

German population increases rapidly. In 1815, the states in 
the present German Empire had a population of twenty-five 
millions. In 1900, the number was over fifty-six millions. 
This increase has resulted in a large German emigration, 
which has gone mainly to the United States and to South 
America. Partly to secure commercial advantages for her 
citizens abroad, and partly in hopes of keeping future German 
emigrants under the German flag, the government has recently 
adopted the policy of acquiring colonies. 

Bismarck announced this plan in 1884. At that time, Ger- 
many had no possessions outside of Europe ; but, though she 
was late in entering the nineteenth century scramble for 
foreign possessions, she has made rapid progress. In Africa, 
she has vast possessions, nearly a million square miles in all, 
mainly on the Guinea coast and in the southwest and south- 
east. In the western Pacific, she owns several groups of 
valuable islands.^ Shortly after 1890, she began acquiring 
concessions in Asia Minor from the Turkish government ; and 
this rich region, so long abandoned to barbarism, is perhaps to 
be the most important field for German enterprise in the near 
future.^ But in 1897, another field opened, probably even 
more attractive. Two missionaries of German birth were mur- 
dered in China, and the German government made that event 
an excuse to seize a valuable Chinese port, Kiau-Chau, with a 



* See maps facing page 608 and followiug page 612. 

2 Germany does not own territory in Asia Minor, but she has obtained by 
treaties valuable rights of trade and railroad-building; and in case of a 
break-up of Turkey's power, she would probably convert these rights into full 
occupancy of territory. Largely in order to secure these concessions, the 
Emperor has courted the Sultan's favor on all occasions. Cf. § 582. 



§ 485] SOCIALISM. 489 

large adjacent territory. From this center, Germany has ac- 
quired a "sphere of influence" in eastern China, in wliich 
German capitalists are developing mines and building rail- 
roads, as Russians are doing to the north, and Englishmen and 
Frenchmen to the south. In case of a break-up of China, Ger- 
many is in a position to secure a rich share of the plunder; 
and, in any event, her " sphere of influence " is for practical 
economic purposes a foreign dependency. 

As a colonizing nation, however, Germany so far is not a 
success. Capitalists go in small numbers to Asia Minor and 
to China, but they do not go to Africa ; and the mass of emi- 
grants still sail to America, giving up German citizenship. 
The government is believed to be anxious to obtain possessions 
in South or Central America, where these emigrants might make 
their homes ; and but for the Monroe Doctrine of the United 
States, some attempts in these lines would undoubtedly be made. 

485. Social Democracy. — Socialism, which was so important 
a factor in France in the first half of the century, did not 
appear prominently in Germany until after 1848. German 
Socialism was founded by Karl Marx, a profound philosophic 
thinker,^ and its doctrines were thrown among the masses by 
his disciple Lassalle, a brilliant writer and speaker; its more 
recent leaders have been Liehknecht and Bebel. 

There was of course no opening for Socialism in politics 
until manhood suffrage was introduced in the elections for the 
Reichstag of the North German Confederation (1867). The 
first Reichstag contained eight Socialists. These men bitterly 
opposed the war with France, especially after it became a war 
for conquest, and criticised the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine 
against the will of the inhabitants.^ This "unpatriotic" atti- 



1 Marx teaches that "Collectivism" is a natural stage in historical evolu- 
tion. " In savagery each one produces separately for himself; in our recent 
civilization, the many produce mainly for the few ; in a more perfect state, all 
will produce collectively for all." 

2 Th3 party in Germany and elsewhere is opposed to all wars of conquest. 
It calls upon the workingmen of all countries to combine against the capitalist 



THE GEEMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§ 485 

tude resulted in a check. The leaders were tried for treason 
and condemned to a few years ' imprisonment, and in the first 
imperial Reichstag (1871) the party had only two representa- 
tives. In 1874, the number had risen to nine, and in 1877, to 
twelve. Bismarck then began to feel it needful to put down 
Socialism. His first effort to secure repressive legislation from 
the Reichstag failed, but it called out two attempts by Socialist 
fanatics to assassinate the Emperor (1877, 1878). The criminals 
had no sanction from the Social Democratic party ; ^ but they 
played into Bismarck's hands. The Reichstag was dissolved, 
and the new election gave a legislature ready to go all lengths 
against the " Red Specter." New laws gave to the government 
the authority to dissolve associations, break up meetings, con- 
fiscate publications, suspend habeas corpus privileges and jury 
trial, and banish suspects by decree, without any trial at all.^ 

But here again the Iron Chancellor failed. The Socialists 
met his ruthless severity with as much fortitude and heroism ^ 
as the Catholic clergy had shown in their conflict, and all that 
he could do was to make Socialism for a time an underground 
current. In 1881, just after the beginning of the repressive 
legislation, the Socialist vote fell oft' somewhat ; but after that 
it again gained steadily. In the election of 1884 the popular 
vote had risen to over half a million — much more than ever 
before — and in 1887 it was over three-fourths of a million. 
Then the repressive laws were allowed to expire ; and in 1890 
the vote was doubled. Since 1898 the Socialists have been 
much the largest German party, and they have captured the 
wage-earners of the great cities almost in a body. The follow- 
ing table shows their progress : — 

classes, and it teaches that the burdens and losses of wars between nations 
fall in the end on the working classes, who ought to be brothers. 

1 The Social Democratic party is not a party of violence, but of political 
methods. Cf . Russell, Social Democracy , 98, 99. 

2 Not content with these extraordinary powers, Bismarck made them retro- 
active, and at once banished from Berlin sixty or seventy men who had for- 
merly been connected with the Socialists. 

8 For an account, see Russell, 103-114. 



ECTION. 


Votes Cas' 


1871 


124,000 


1874 


351,000 


1877 


493,000 


1878 


437,000 


1881 


312,000 


1884 


549,000 


1887 


763,000 


1890 


1,427,000 


1893 


1,786,000 


1898 


2,107,000 


1903 


3,025,000 


1907 


3,259,000 



§ 485] SOCIALISM. 491 

Votes Cast. Percentage of Total Members in 
Vote. Reichstag. 

4 2 

7 9 

8.5 12 

8 9 
6.3 12 
6 24 

7.6 11 
20 36 
23 44 
28 56 
32.3 81 
31.6 43 

The total vote in 1907 was 10,273,528, divided among tvyelve parties. 
Tlie Socialists lost nearly half their seats, and — a more serious fact — a 
small percentage in the popular vote. But they are still fifty per cent 
stronger than the next largest party (the Center, or Catholic, with 
2,183,000 votes), and no other party is more than half their size. The 
number of Socialist representatives is small in proportion to the popular 
vote, because of the unjust apportionment. The Socialist vote is strong- 
est in the cities. The cities have grown rapidly in population (Berlin has 
tripled since 1860) ; but, from fear of Socialist gains, the distribution of 
representatives has not been changed since the establishment of the 
Empire (§ 475). If a fair apportionment, such as the constitution calls 
for, were to be made, the Social Democrats would have, not forty-three 
delegates, but one hundred and twenty-five. The Center, with two- 
thirds the votes of the Socialists, has two and a half times as many 
delegates ; but a fair apportionment would reduce its one hundred 
and five to eighty-three. So absurd an electoral system cannot last 
indefinitely. 

William II, for a time, seemed disposed to use gentler 
methods than those that Bismarck had followed ; but he, too, 
soon became alarmed at the growth of the Socialist vote, and 
in 1894-1895 and again in 1897-1898 he tried vehemently to 
secure another "exceptional law," even more sweeping than 
Bismarck's legislation. The proposed bill of 1894 provided 
two years' imprisonment for " publicly attacking religion, the 
monarchy, marriage, the family, or property, by insulting 



492 THE GERMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871. [§485 

utterances." Under such a law, to suggest a change in the 
government to a republican form, or, indeed, to urge much 
milder changes, might constitute a crime ; and all Liberals 
very properly joined with the Socialists in voting down the 
proposal.^ Even the Catholics did not dare to vote for it, lest 
their opposition to civil marriage should be treated as a crime. 
In 1897, a like attempt was made in the more conservative 
Prussian Parliament; but even there the bill was rejected 
by a decisive vote. These are the most serious checks that 
Emperor William has met (1904). 

The above account suggests some of the causes of strength in Social 
Democracy. That party has for its adherents, not only CoUectivists, or 
Socialists proper, but also great numbers of political Radicals, or Demo- 
crats and believers in Republican government. Indeed, a large part of 
the vague discontent v^^ith the arbitrary nature of the government finds ex- 
pression in votes for Socialist candidates. It is unfortunate that the two 
great forces in Germany, Autocracy and Socialism, should be so far apart.2 
But perhaps the remedy will come in modification of the Socialist program. 
At recent congresses of that party, it has placed first in its platform a 
number of practical political and economic measures which the average 
American or Englishman would not regard as dangerous, — such as uni- 
versal suffrage without discrimination against woman, equal electoral dis- 
tricts, payment of members of the Reichstag, responsibility of the govern- 
ment to the Reichstag, popular local government, securities for free speech, 
a militia system in place of the present army system, an eight-hour labor 
day, freedom to organize labor unions, and progressive income taxes. 
If the party leaves " collectivism " in the background for the present, and 
selects wisely from such a list for its working program, it may yet fill the 
place of a true liberal party and play a great part in gradually regener- 
ating Germany in politics and industry. 

1 A few days before this defeat, William had suffered another repulse from 
the same quarter. At the opening of the Reichstag in December, 1894, when 
cheers for the Emperor were called for, the Socialists kept their seats. The 
government, at the Emperor's desire, introduced a request for permission to 
bring the offenders to trial for lese-niajeste, but the request was refused by a 
vote of 168 to 88. Of course members of the Reichstag cannot be prosecuted 
for anything that they say or do in that body, except by its consent. 

2 The various "Liberal" parties have been shrinking, upon tlie whole, in 
recent years, and so the contest between the Ultra-radicals and Ultra-con- 
servatives has seemed to threaten more ominously. 



§ 486] SOCIALISM. 493 

486. State Socialism. — Early in the contest with the Social 
Democrats, Bismarck tried to cut the ground from under their 
feet by adopting part of their program of social betterment. 

In 1883, a public address of the Emperor declared, "That 
the state should care for its poorer members in a higher 
degree than in the past is not only a duty demanded by 
humanity and Christianity, but is also a measure necessary to 
preserve the state." In 1884, Bismarck said, " Give the work- 
ingman a right to work while he is in health, and assure him 
care when he is sick and maintenance when he is old, and 
the Social Democrats will get no hold upon him." In ac- 
cordance with these principles, Bismarck favored the intro- 
duction of great public works to afford employment, and he 
created a state fund to help insure the injured and the aged. 
The state compels the laborers to insure against sickness ; it 
insures them against accident, taking the premium from the 
employer, and it pays old-age pensions to men over seventy 
years of age, out of a fund created partly by payments from 
the insured, partly by payments from the employers, and 
partly by a payment from the state treasury. Many excellent 
results have come from this legislation, but it is too early to 
pass judgment finally upon it. Certainly it has not weakened 
Social Democracy, whose adherents rail at it as fear-inspired, 
poor-law legislation. 

To Bismarck and William IT, it is the duty of the divine- 
right government to care for the laborer. To the Social 
Democrats, it is the right of the laborers themselves to con- 
trol the government and to care for themselves through it. 
State Socialism in a democratic country like America- would 
be the same thing as Social Democracy : in Germany at pres- 
ent it is old-fashioned paternalism.^ 



1 Said Emperor William II in 1894, "The noblest task of the state is to 
protect the weaker classes of society and to aid them to higher economic and 
moral development ; and the dnty of the state is to smooth away the diffi- 
culties and to preserve an increased content and solidarity, hut this must be 
done by the state and 7iot by the people." 



494 ITALY SINCE 1870. [§487 

487. Political Parties. — Of the ten parties in the German 
Reichstag besides the Socialist and the Catholic Center, four 
stand for different shades of liberalism, three are conserva- 
tive, one is anti-Semitic, and the rest represent race feeling. 
The Polish representatives from the eastern provinces of 
Prussia, the one Danish representative from Schleswig, and 
most of the representatives from Alsace-Lorraine are standing 
protests against the attempts to crush their respective nation- 
alities by the compulsory introduction of the German law and 
language. Besides these there are two or three distinct South 
German parties ; and indeed the great " Center " is to a large 
extent a sectional South German delegation. , South Germany 
(Bavaria and Wurtemberg in particular) has opposed bitterly 
all attempts to increase the army and navy ; and the feeling of 
the vivacious people in these districts toward the severe, stern 
Prussian is one of the most serious factors of present German 
politics^ (§ 471). 

FoK Further Reading. — See references on page 478. Dawson's 
Bismarck and Socialism and Russell's German Social Democracy give 
good statements of the topic suggested by the names. Wilson's The State 
gives a clear treatment of the constitution ; and advanced students may 
use Lowell's Governments and Parties. For recent events and special 
topics, the student must consult recent Reviews, Year Books, and Annual 
Encyclopedias. 

Special Report. — Prussia's schools and their history, 

V. ITALY SINCE 1870. 

488. Internal Conditions, Political, Educational, and Economic. 

— The constitution of Italy is essentially that given to Sar- 
dinia in 1848. It provides for a limited monarchy, somewhat 
of the Prussian type, but more liberal. By custom, as in 
France and England, the ministries resign when they no longer 
have a parliamentary majority. Local government and admin- 

1 For political parties and tendencies at the close of the nineteenth century, 
see table in Lowell, II, 42, or in Russell, 149. 



§ 488] INTERNAL CONDITIONS. 495 

istrative courts are patterned upon the Frencli model. Until 
1882, a high property qualification was required for voters. At 
that date, after two years' agitation, the franchise was given to 
all who could read and write, or who paid certain rents or four 
dollars in direct taxes. This raised the electorate from about 
six hundred thousand to over two millions, but it still excluded 
half the adult males. Since that time, however, with the prog- 
ress of education, the proportion of voters has been increasing. 

In 1861, Italy had no schools except those taught by reli- 
gious orders. In the next twenty years, a fair system of public 
education was built up. Primary education is gratuitous, com- 
pulsory, and regulated by the state, but attendance is not well 
enforced. In 1861, seventy-four per cent of the population over 
six years of age could not read or write. In 1881, this per- 
centage of illiterates had fallen to sixty-two. The decrease 
since that time has been rapid, but the exact figures cannot be 
given. The higher educational institutions are excellent, and 
in many fields Italian scholars hold a foremost place. 

The Kingdom of Italy at its birth was far behind the other 
great states of Europe. Its proper tasks were to provide for 
public education, to repress brigandage, to build railroads, to 
foster useful industries, to drain malarial swamps and reclaim 
abandoned lands. In all this, much progress has been made ; 
but the government has been hampered by its poverty and by 
the tremendous expenditure for military purposes. Taxation 
is crushing; and yet, much of the time, the government can 
hardly meet expenses. Half the revenue goes to pay the 
interest on the national debt, and two-thirds the rest is for 
military purposes, leaving only a small part for the normal aiid 
helpful purposes of government.^ To make ends meet, the 



1 Italy was freed by force of arms, in 1859-1861 ; and the same power com- 
pleted her union between 1861 and 1870. The new-born state, for many years 
more, feared that the work might be undone by France or Austria; and to 
the present time she has maintained the usual European military system 
(§ 483), with longer terms of active service than are required in Germany or 
France. From her position, too, Italy has had some reason to wish to be 



496 ITALY SINCE 1870. [§ 489 

government has been driven to desperate financial expedients. 
Salt and tobacco are government monopolies ; the state runs a 
lottery; and taxation upon houses, land, and incomes is so 
exorbitant as seriously to hamper industry. The financial 
and military problem is the great question before Italy at 
present (1904), 

The economic distress has led to political and socialistic agi- 
tation. The government in general has met this by stern 
repressive legislation. Socialists and Republicans have been 
imprisoned by hundreds, often on the charge of being Anar- 
chists ; and for years at a time large parts of Italy have been 
in "state of siege," or under martial law. The Radicals and 
Socialists, however, have gained slowly in the Parliament. 

489. Colonial and Territorial Questions. — A large emigration 
leaves Italy each year, mainly for Brazil and the Argentine 
Republic. Partly in hope to retain these emigrants as Ital- 
ian citizens, the government took up a policy of securing 
colonial dependencies. Attention was first turned to Tunis, 
but when Prance supplanted Italian influence there, Italy 
acquired valuable territory on the Abyssinian coast in North- 
east Africa (1885). From 1889 to 1896, indeed, Italy held a 
protectorate over all Abyssinia; but in the latter year, an 
Italian army was destroyed in the interior, and Italian control 
was reduced again to the coast district, Eritrea. Up to the 
present time, however, emigration has not been directed in any 
considerable degree to this possession. 

One other territorial difficulty annoys Italy. Austria still 
keeps the district of Trentino on the southern slope of the 
Alps, with its three hundred thousand people. The population 
is Italian in race and language, and the district geographically 
is part of Italy. Italians look forward to the ultimate acquisi- 

strong in the Mediterranean, and at an immense cost she has kept up a navy, 
among the most powerful in the world, after England's. Italy, however, is 
much less able to endure this tremendous burden than are rich countries like 
France and Germany, and she is one of those states in wliich the present mili- 
tary system is likely soonest to break down. 



§490] THE PAPAL QUESTION. 497 

tion of this region. The party that most zealously demands 
this is known as Italia Irredenta. 

490. The Papal Question. — Italy has also a serious problem 
in the relations of state and church. Almost all Italians are 
Roman Catholics, in name at least ; but the government and 
the popes have been hostile to each other ever since the King- 
dom of Italy was established. The clergy, of course, in the 
main adhere to the pope, while the great mass of the people 
earnestly support the government. 

In 1870, when Italy took forceful possession of Rome, Pope 
Pius IX protested against the act as a deed of brigandage.^ 
The government has left to the papacy every power consistent 
with the territorial unity of Italy. The pope is not an Italian 
subject, but, in all matters of form, is an independent sovereign, 
though his territory has been reduced to a single palace (the 
Vatican) and some small estates. Within this domain he 
keeps his own court, maintains his own diplomatic service, 
and carries on the machinery of a state. A generous annual 
income is also set aside for him by the government of Italy, 
but this has never been claimed. The clergy and church 
throughout Italy are left by the government to manage their 
own affairs as completely as in the United States, except that 
the state pays the salaries in compensation for the church 
lands it has seized. 

In common with many zealous Catholics, however, Pope 
Pius IX felt that to exercise his proper influence as head of 
the church, he must be also an independent temporal prince. 
He refused to recognize the Italian state or to have anything 
to do with it : he styled himself a prisoner and called upon all 
loyal Catholics to take no part in elections or in public affairs. 
Por some time, no doubt, it was possible that in case of a 
general European war. Prance or Austria might restore the 
papacy as a temporal principality, but that possibility has 



1 In spite of this, the citizens of Rome ratified the act by a vote of 130,000 
to 1500. or niD'=!ty to one. 



498 AUSTRIA-HUNGARY SINCE 1848. [§ 491 

become very faint indeed ; and though the popes have not yet 
announced a change of attitude ^ toward the Italian state, it is 
probable that the present unhappy condition will not long con- 
tinue. Certainly, so far, the papacy has not suffered from the 
arrangement of 1870-1871. Never before have the popes been 
so independent of foreign interference ; 'nor, since Gregory VII 
and Innocent III, have they been more powerful in spiritual 
and temporal concerns than in the recent period since they 
ceased to rule a petty principality. 

For Fctrther Reading. — See references on page 464, with Wilson's 
The State, and, of course. Reviews, Year Books, and Annual Encyclo- 
pedias. 

VI. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY — A DUAL MONARCHY. 

491. Historical Sketch from 1848 to the Establishment of the 
Dual Monarchy in 1867. — The medieval system lasted in the 
Austrian realms until 1848. The revolutions of that year 
abolished the feudal burdens of the peasantry and the feudal 
privileges of the nobles ; and even the counter-revolution under 
Schwarzenberg (§ 453) did not undo these social reforms. It 
did restore absolutism, however, and from 1850 to 1860 strenu- 
ous efforts were made to centralize and Germanize the various 
districts that had risen for national independence in 1848. 
The former rights of local government in Bohemia and Hun- 
gary^ were trampled under foot, and only the German lan- 
guage was allowed in the schools, the press, the courts, and 
the administration. Por a Bohemian to publish a paper in 
his native language was a penal offense. 

The defeat of Austria in 1859 by France and Italy (§ 460) 
was hailed with delight by Bohemia and Hungary ; and the 

1 This is still true iu 1907, though the election of Pope Pius X (1903) was 
thought by some observers to herald a change in papal policy. 

2 The movement in Hungary for self-government and reform, from 1815 to 
1849, is an excellent subject for a brief special report by an advanced student. 
Another report may be made upon the life of Deak, the greatest Hungarian 
statesman. 



§492] A DUAL MONARCHY. 499 

Emperor awoke to the absolute necessity of conciliating these 
provinces. Liberal reforms were begun, and a parliamentary 
system was introduced, both for the Empire as a whole and 
for its chief divisions. Representation in the central Parlia- 
ment was so arranged, however, as to allow the Germans still 
to swamp all the other nationalities ; and the plan for such 
a body failed, because Hungarians, Bohemians, and Croats 
refused to elect delegates. Then, in 1862, the Emperor made 
still greater concessions, granting a kind of federal constitu- 
tion. But Hungary was not content with this ; and, after 
the overthrow of Austria at Sadowa (1866), it became nec- 
essary at any cost to satisfy Hungary. The Emperor and 
Erancis Deak (the Hungarian leader) arranged a compact, 
which was then ratified separately by the Hungarian and 
Austrian parliaments; and this compact is the present con- 
stitution of Austria-Hungary. 

492. The Dual Monarchy : Central Government. — Austria- 
Hungary is now a dual monarchy, a confederation of two 
states. Each state has its own constitution, its own parlia- 
ment, its own system of local government and law. The con- 
nection between the two is threefold : they have (1) the same 
monarch, (2) common ministers for war, finance, and foreign 
affairs, and (3) a curious kind of a common council (the Dele- 
gations). 

The monarch is crowned separately, with different titles, in 
Vienna and in Budapest, and his powers differ in the two 
states. The Delegations are two committees of sixty each, 
the one chosen by the Austrian Parliament, the other by the 
Hungarian. They meet one year at Vienna, the next at Buda- 
pest ; and they carry on their work, one in German, the other 
in the Magyar language. If the two bodies disagree on any 
measure, they hold a joint session ^ and vote without debate. 



1 If members are absent from one Delegation, then at such a joint session, 
the same number mast be excluded by lot from the other, so as to keep the 
two bodies equal. 



500 AUSTRIA-HUNGARY SINCE 1848. [§493 

Strictly, the Delegations do not compose a real legislature, and their 
functions are very limited, but they make the dual monarchy something 
more than a mere " personal union." 

Financial arrangements between the two parts of the Empire rest upon 
agreements, or treaties, between the legislature (Reichsrath) of Austria 
and that of Hungary. These arrangements are passed for periods of ten 
years, and their renewals are each time an occasion for bitter contests, 
especially in Austria, where the Bohemians are strongly opposed to the 
dual arrangement. In 1897, the conflict was particularly sharp, and for 
weeks the Reichsrath was the scene of disgraceful confusion and uproar, 
with several cases of personal violence. 

Hungary holds a favorable position in the Empire. Her people are 
aggressive and politically gifted, and the Magyars are more supreme in 
the Hungarian state than any one party is in the Austrian, and so they 
act with greater unanimity. Hungary pays only thirty-two per cent of 
the imperial expense, though her wealth and population are much larger 
in proportion and though she has half the imperial power. In practice, 
she has more than half: she has controlled the foreign policy of the 
government most of the time since 1867. 

493. The Race Question and the Future of the Empire. — ;- Aus- 
tria has been and still is " a tangle of races and a Babel of 
tongues." Until 1868, the full official title of the Emperor 
ran: "Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, King 
of Croatia, King of Slavonia, King of Galicia, Archduke of 
the Austrias, Grand Duke of Transylvania, Duke of Styria, 
Carinthia, and Carniola, and Princely Count of Hapsburg and 
Tyrol." The inhabitants of this conglomerate state speak 
eleven distinct languages,^ besides numerous dialects. Half 
the population are Slavs, broken up, however, into many sub- 
races, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, Slavonians, Poles, Ruthenians ; 
a fourth are Germans ; a fifth are Magyars ; and the rest are 
Italians, Jews, or Illyrians. 

If we regard the Slav sub-races as separate peoples, the Germans are 
more numerous than any other people. They number eight and a half 
millions. The Magyars come next, witli seven and a half millions. Of 
the Slavs, the Czechs lead with nearly six millions. The Poles count three 

1 At the opening of the Austrian Reichsrath the official oath is adminis- 
tered in eight languages. 



§493] THE RACE QUESTION. 501 

and three-fourths millions ; the Euthenians, three millions ; the Slavonians, 
about a million. Then there are over a half-million Croats and Serbs, and 
about two hundred thousand Roumanians. There are also seven hundred 
thousand Italians, ajid about half a million of other peoples. 

The arrangements of 1867 sacrificed the Slavs of the Empire 
to satisfy the demands of Hungary. Hungary and Austria, 
however, each has a race question. Until recently, the Ger- 
mans have been the dominant people in the Austrian half, 
and the Magyars still are in their half; but in the latter part 
of the nineteenth century, with the growth of education and 
prosperity, the other races pushed forward toward an equality 
of culture, and, in those provinces where they are most nu- 
merous, they began to demand not only equal political rights, 
but even national independence. This fact gives the key to 
all the recent history of the Empire. 

In Hungary, Croatia has been allowed some privileges of its 
own ; but elsewhere, despite violent protests, the Magyars are 
slowly but successfully imposing their language and national- 
ity upon the scattered Slav fragments. 

In Austria the case is much worse. Bohemia in particular 
demands, if not independence, at least that she be admitted 
into the imperial federation as a separate state upon an equal- 
ity with Hungary. In the last decade of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the struggle was particularly vehement. The Czechs 
make about two-thirds of the population of Bohemia, but the 
other third are mainly German, and the Austrian Germans 
elsewhere are unwilling to abandon these fellow-citizens to 
Czech rule. On two or three occasions Bohemia was under 
martial law for months at a time; but, upon the whole, the 
Czechs have been steadily winniiig ground, until the Germans 
in that country begin to long for annexation to the German 
Empire. Says Lowell (Governments and Parties, 121) : — 

In Austria, everybody is irreconcilable. Almost the only party who 
admit the legality of the existing constitution . . . are the German Lib- 
erals, and [for many years] they have been opposed to the government 
[the ministry]. The task of the ministers, therefore, has been hard. It 



502 AUSTRIA-HUNGAEY SINCE 1848. [§493 

has resembled that of an Esquimaux trying to drive a team of dogs, all of 
which want to break loose from the sledge, except the strongest, which 
pulls the wrong way. 

Thus Austria-Hungary is the uncertain factor in European 
politics. Her German population is drawn toward the Ger- 
man Empire : her Italians want to be annexed to Italy ; her 
Poles look to the revival of the Polish kingdom ; the Eouma- 
niaus in eastern Hungary wish to be joined to neighboring 
Koumania, and her many Slav elements desire independence 
or annexation to neighboring Slav states. The condition of 
the Empire is one of unstable equilibrium, and it offers the 
most probable field for future rearrangements in Europe. How- 
ever, despite all these weaknesses and the jealousy between 
the two great halves, the dual state has lasted nearly half a 
century and may endure for long to come. 

"If France has been a laboratory for political experiments, Austria- 
Hungary is a museum of political curiosities, but it contains nothing so 
extraordinary as tlie relations between Austria and Hungary themselves. 
The explanation for the strange connection is to be found in the fact that 
the two countries are not held together from within by any affection or loy- 
alty for a common fatherland, but are forced together by a pressure from 
the outside which makes the union an international and military necessity. 
Austria, on the one hand, would not be large enough alone to be a really 
valuable ally to Germany and Italy, and, if not an ally, she would be likely 
to become a prey, for she contains districts which they would be glad to 
absorb. Moreover, there would be imminent danger of some of her dif- 
ferent races breaking into open revolt, if the Emperor had not the Hun- 
garian troops at his command. On the other hand, the Magyars without 
Austria tvould not be sufficiently strong to block the ambition of Bussia, 
or resist the tide of Panslavism. They would not only have little interest 
outside their own dominions, but they would run a grave risk of foreign 
interference in favor of the Slavs in Hungary. A union is therefore una- 
voidable and it is very little closer than is absolutely necessary to carry 
out the purposes for which it exists. . . . One would naturally suppose 
that a mechanism so intricate and so unwieldy would be continually. get- 
ting out of order, and in constant danger of breaking down. But politi- 
cal necessity is stronger than perfection of organization, and . . . the 
forces which have made the dual system work smoothly in the past are 
likely to produce the same result in the future." — Lowell, Governments 
and Parties, II, 177-179. 



§493] FOREIGN POLICY. 503 

In foreign policy, Austria has abandoned Italy, and has 
been excluded from German affairs. She turns naturally, 
therefore, to the Black Sea and the ^gean, and in 1878, after 
the war between Turkey and Russia (§ 577), she received from 
Turkey the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are 
administered as an imperial territory, without being joined to 
either of the separate states. The Hungarians, however, do 
not look with favor upon the acquisition of more Slav popu- 
lation, and so Austria-Hungary is not in position to take 
advantage of the weakness of her neighbors to the southeast. 

For Further Reading. — Andrews or Seignobos for the narrative, 
and Wilson or Lowell for the constitutions. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SMALL STATES OP WESTERN EUROPB.i 

494. Enumeration. — Besides the great states (of which Great Britain 
and Eussia are still to be treated for the nineteenth century), the usual 
map of Europe shows thirteen 2 small states. All of these except Switzer- 
land are constitutional monarchies. Five — the Slav and Greek states — 
are in the southeast of Europe in the Balkan region. The other eight 
belong to Western Europe and claim treatment at this point. 

Of these small states of Western Europe, two are in the south, in the 
Iberian peninsula ; three are in the north, in the Scandinavian peninsulas ; 
two lie at the mouth of the Rhine, and the remaining one at its source. 
Four of the eight — Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland — have at 
some time ranked as Great Powers. 

I. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA. 
A. Spain. 

495. From i8oo to 1833: Revolution and Absolutism. — Be- 
fore 1800 the ideas of the French Revolutionists began to filter 
into Spain, but for a long time their welcome was confined to 
the small educated class. Napoleon's attack broke down the 
old monarchy and gave these Liberals a chance. They took 
the lead in the War for Independence (1809-1813), and, in the 
midst of that struggle, a national Cortes drew up the famous 
Constitution of 1812. Then followed the return of the cruel 



1 It is suggested that this chapter be read and talked over without much 
attempt to fix details. 

2 There are also four or five others, like the little Eepublic of San Marino 
in the Italian Alps, so small that few maps take notice of them. A student 
may be asked to look them up in a Year Book for a special report. 

50-i 



§496] SPAIN, 1800-1873, 505 

and suspicious Ferdinand VII, his treacherous overthrow of 
the constitution, its restoration by the Revolution of 1820, 
and the armed intervention of the Holy Alliance in 1823 
(§§ 393, 397). 

Por the next ten years no constitutionalism could raise its 
head, and the old Liberals were vigorously persecuted. To 
own a foreign book was a crime. In 1831 a young man was 
hanged in Madrid for shouting " Hurrah for Liberty ! " and a 
widow met the same fate, for embroidering on a flag the words, 
"Law, Liberty, Equality." 

496. From 1833 to 1873: Paper Constitutions and "Govern- 
ment by Revolt." — In 1833 Ferdinand died, leaving the crown 
to his infant daughter Isabella, under the regency of his wife 
Christina. Ferdinand's brother, Carlos, also claimed the throne ; 
and since Carlos was the acknowledged leader of the Ultra- 
reactionists, Christina necessarily threw herself upon the 
support of the Liberals and restored the constitution, — a 
movement the more natural since she was the sister-in-law of 
Louis Philippe, who had just been crowned in France by a 
revolution against absolute monarchy. There followed seven 
years of ferocious warfare between Constitutionalists and 
Carlists. England and France gave sympathy and aid to the 
former, while Metternich and the reorganized Holy Alliance 
sent secret aid to the latter. 

Finally, in 1840, Carlos was driven from the country ; but 
meantime the Constitutionalists had split into two factions. 
In 1834 Christina had replaced the old constitution with one 
of a less radical character. The adherents of the new consti- 
tution were known as Moderates ; those who supported the 
old were called Progressionists. The two parties had already 
come to blows while both were fighting the Carlists ; and in 
1840, when Christina showed that she was bent upon still fur- 
ther usurpation, Espartero, a Progressionist general, compelled 
her to abdicate the regency in his own favor. 

Espartero was an honest gentleman and a gallant soldier, 
but in politics he was an idealist, without executive ability. 



506 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§496 

Two years later he was replaced by a military rising of a 
Moderate general, Narvaez, a merciless ruler, who was described 
by his enemies as '' a brigand of considerable intelligence." 

Both Espartero and Narvaez had more than one lease of 
power in the years that followed, and there were occasional 
intervals when smaller men controlled the government ; but 
political methods remained essentially unchanged until 1876. 
During this middle half of the century, the government is 
well described as " government by revolt." The successive 
military revolutions, however, were marked by surprisingly 
little bloodshed. It has been wittily said, that during this 
period, "revolution in Spain became a fine art." When an 
administration had grown sufficiently unpopular, some officer, 
with docile battalions and a grievance, would issue a ''pro- 
nunciamento," declaring the existing government dissolved 
and naming the members of a new one. If the Revolutionist 
had counted his strength advisedly, the old government would 
accommodatingly vanish ; if it stayed, the revolt usually dis- 
appeared. It was part of the political game to know, without 
fighting, when one was beaten ; and, as some one has said, 
Spaniards developed a delicate tact in working revolutions, as 
English-speaking people work elections, with the least possible 
disturbance to the affairs of everyday life.^ 

In the first third of the nineteenth century, Spain had no constitution, 
even in name, except for two brief periods, 1812-1814 and 1820-1823 ; 
and indeed constitutionalism was only a vague aspiration in the minds of 
a few. After 1833 there was always some paper constitution ; but in 
practice, until 1876, there was absolutely no constitutional government. 
During this second period of the century, revolutions, new paper con- 
stitutions, regencies, dictatorships, and ministries which were dictator- 
ships in all but name, succeeded each other in bewildering confusion, — 
each change effected by a coup d^etat, never by a constitutional election. 

To be sure, after each of the meaningless commotions of these forty 

1 It is difficult to avoid an appearance of levity in an honest description 
of this peculiarity of politics both in Spain and in many of the Spanish 
American states through most of the nineteenth century. With our clumsier 
northern races, in such a play some one would be likely to get hurt. 



§497] SPAIN — REPUBLIC OF 1873-1874. 607 

years, the victorious faction would " appeal to the nation " for sanction ; 
but it used all the machinery of the government, including the police, to 
carry its candidates ; and members of an opposing party, if active, were 
liable to be mobbed by the government party (which was always the 
"party of tlie club"), or, if they resisted, to be locked up "to prevent 
a disturbance." Elections always showed a gratifying unanimity in 
favor of the existing government, whatever it was. 

As the young Isabella approached womanhood she developed 
despotic principles and profligate morals, and her reign v^^as 
one of the most shameful episodes in modern history. Waste- 
ful taxation and miserable misgovernment alienated faction 
after faction ; and, though the prisons were crowded with 
political prisoners, the country was seething with discontent. 
The later part of the reign, too, was diversified by new Carlist 
risings in favor of the son of the first Carlos. 

In 1868, the various disturbances culminated in a success- 
ful Liberal rising, led by Serrano and Prim, exiled military 
adventurers. The Queen fled to France and abdicated in favor 
of her son Alphonso ; but the Progressionist cry had become 
" Down with the Bourbons ! " and a Provisional Government 
was set up, with Prim as dictator. A group of Republicans 
now appeared, led by Castelar, demanding an immediate Re- 
public, and new Carlist insurrections broke out in favor of the 
grandson of the first Carlos, — Cuba meantime blazing with 
rebellion. The Provisional Government fashioned a new con- 
stitution of a liberal monarchic type, and then for two years 
the crown went begging. It was offered in succession to Es- 
partero, to a Prince of Portugal, to Pedro I, who had already 
abdicated the crown of Brazil (§ 502), to two Italian princes, 
and to Leopold of Hohenzollern (§ 471). Finally, in 1871, 
Amacleo, a younger son of Victor Emmanuel of Italy, accepted 
the throne, and made an honorable attempt to rule as a con- 
stitutional king ; but after two years he gave up the task in 
despair and left the country. 

497. The Republic of 1873-1874: Castelar's Dictatorship. — 
Then, in 1873, the Republicans were allowed to have their 



508 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§497 

turn. The majority of the republican Cortes, however, wished 
a strong, centralized republic, like France, while a minority 
wished a federal republic, with the ancient provinces, Cas- 
tile, Aragon, etc., for the separate states. After months of 
wrangling, the Federalists carried their point by a coup d'etat, 
and Castelar became president of the new republic. The con- 
stitution, said to have been drawn up in twenty-four hours, 
was never more than a form. The leaders had made absurd 
promises which could not be kept : to reduce taxes, though the 
treasury was bankrupt ; to do away with conscription, though 
the army was demoralized and revolt flourished; to abolish 
capital punishment, though crime was rampant. But Castelar 
could learn; and six months of anarchy changed his views. 
The Carlists were making rapid progress in the northern prov- 
inces ; the seaboard cities of the south had declared themselves 
independent communes, after the plan of Paris two years 
before; taxes ceased to come in; the remnants of the army 
were in mutiny ; the towns were at the mercy of ruffians, 
and the country districts in the hands of bandits. Then, in a 
fortunate recess of the Cortes, Castelar turned his vague legal 
authority into a beneficent dictatorship. The choice, he saw, 
lay between bayonet-rule in the hands of disciplined troops 
controlled by good men, and pike-rule in the hands of a vicious 
rabble led by escaped galley-slaves. He candidly abandoned 
his old theories, broke his foolish pledges, and with wise energy 
brought order out of chaos. He centralized the federal state ; 
he crushed the communes with an army recruited by a strict 
conscription ; and he checked crime and anarchy by military 
executions after swift drumhead courtmartials. 

It was natural that he should be assailed as a tyrant and 
suspected of selfish motives. When the Cortes reassembled, 
his old friends passed a vote of lack of confidence. The com- 
mander of the troops asked for permission to disperse the 
Cortes, but, by promptly resigning, Castelar showed that he 
had no wish to prolong his personal authority. To-day no one 
doubts his good faith or good judgment, and the name of this 



§499] SPAIN — CONSTITUTION OF 1876. 509 

republican statesman-author-dictator stands out as the chief 
glory of Spain in the nineteenth century.^ 

498. Restoration of the Monarchy. — Castelar's resignation was 
followed by brief anarchy ; but two more revolutions brought 
the nation to the restoration of the old Bourbon line, at the 
close of 1874, in the person of the young Alphonso XII,^ son 
of Isabella. This restoration was accomplished in the usual 
way, by a military pronunciamento by a general; but it was 
welcomed with delight by the exliausted nation, and it seems 
to have closed the period of revolution. The new govern- 
ment proved vigorous and prudent. In two years the Carlists 
were driven out, and the constitution of 1876 introduced Spain 
to a more hopeful period. 

499. The Constitution of 1876 and its Workings. — The govern- 
ment in theory rests mainly in the Cortes. This body consists 
of a Senate and a Congress. Half the senators are elected, by 
complex arrangements ; while the rest are appointed for life, 
or hold the position by virtue of other office or of relationship 
to the king. The congressmen are elected by manhood suffrage 
(since 1890). Local government has been organized wisely on 
tlie basis of historic provinces, with a larger amount of local 
self-control than is found in either France or Italy. 

The ministry is expected to resign if outvoted in the Cortes, 
but in practice parliamentary majorities do not yet really make 
ministries : instead, ministries make parliamentary majorities. 
A ministry is formed by coalition between factions, and then 
it supplies itself with a good working majority by a new elec- 
tion. The ministry controls the elections pretty thoroughly ; 
but such things are managed more decorously than formerly, 
and since 1876 no party has " called in the infantry " to change 
the government. Pronunciamentos seem to be outgrown, and, 
in the near future, Spain may be expected to secure the spirit, 

1 Castelar had been professor of philosophy in the University of Madrid 
before he entered politics, and he ranks among the great orators of modern 
times. 

2 In 1885 Alphonso's death left the crown to his son, Alphonso XIII. 



510 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. t§ 500 

as well as the form, of Parliamentary government. There is 
still a Carlist faction, however, which now and then threatens 
to rise, and of late years the Socialists have made some 
disturbances. 

500. Reform Legislation, 1881-1890. — Until 1881, the ener- 
gies of the government went mainly to restoring order. Then, 
for ten years, reform crowded upon reform. Jury trial was 
introduced; civil marriage was permitted; popular education 
was encouraged; the franchise was extended; the slaves in 
the colonies were freed ; honest but vain attempts were made 
to improve the government of the colonies ; and above all, so 
far as Spain's welfare is concerned, the system of taxation 
was reformed. In 1876, taxes were still levied in the waste- 
ful, demoralizing way characteristic of France before the First 
Revolution, and both foreign trade and home industries were 
strangled by them. Conditions are still far from ideal, but the 
heaviest shackles have been struck off. As a result, trade has 
mounted by bounds, manufactures have developed, railroads 
and telegraphs have been tripled. Population has almost 
doubled in the last century, rising from ten millions to over 
eighteen, and the groAvth has been especially rapid in the last 
decades. The number of peasant landowners is rapidly in- 
creasing. To be sure, the shiftless, excitable, bigoted character 
of the mass of the people has not yet become perceptibly 
altered. Still, Spain is far from being a dying nation, as she 
is sometimes called. She is a reviving nation: and the in- 
crease in population and in material wealth is a chief reason 
for the greater political stability of the last forty years. Under 
the new conditions, constant revolution would be too costly. 

Castelar and the more moderate of the old Republicans gave 
their allegiance to the liberal monarchy ; but Castelar, though 
taking a prominent part in politics, always refused to accept 
office, feeling that in that case he might be suspected of selling 
his old convictions. The leading statesman in this long course 
of reform, from 1880 to 1898, was Sagasia, whose name stands 
next to Castelar's in honor in modern Spanish history. 



§501] SPAIN — LOSS OF COLONIES. 511 

501. Religion; Illiteracy; Poverty; Loss of the Colonies; Out- 
look. — Catholicism is the state religion ; and though the con- 
stitution promises freedom of worship to other sects, no other 
religious services are permitted in public. In this respect, Spain 
is the most backward of European lands. The schools are 
poorly attended (despite a compulsory education law) and poorly 
taught. These conditions are improving, but it will be several 
years at least before even half the adults can read and write. 

Castelar and Sagasta wished to change all this radically, (1) 
by the complete separation of church and state, and (2) by the 
exclusion of clerical control from the schools. But the introduc- 
tion of manhood suffrage strengthened the Clericals and 
Conservatives in the Cortes after 1890 (because of the blind 
obedience paid at elections by the ignorant peasants to their 
priests), and for many years no serious attempt at change in 
these lines was possible. In 1906, however, ivide-spread and 
earnest agitation began for both reforms. 

Until 1898, the great drag upon Spanish progress was the 
surviving colonial empire. After 1876 a series of efforts was 
made to give good government and some measure of self-con- 
trol to Cuba, which had been in incessant and wasting rebellion. 
But the problem was probably too difficult to be worked out 
Tinder the most favorable conditions by a country politically 
so backward at home. Corrupt officials oftentimes ruined the 
designs of the government; and in any case, the colonies were 
already so alienated by long misgovernment as to make the 
task hopeless. In 1894, Cuba rose again for independence. 
Spain made tremendous efforts to hold her colony, and for 
some years, at an immense cost, maintained an army of two 
hundred thousand men at a distance of two thousand miles 
from home. The warfare, however, was reducing Cuba to a 
desert; and finally, in 1898, the United States interfered. 
The Spanish-American War resulted in the surrender of all the 
Spanish colonies, except some districts in northwest Africa. 

It may be hoped that this loss will prove a gain. The 
poverty of the government has been a serious hindrance to 



512 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 502 

economic and educational development. The national debt 
is almost two billions of dollars. The interest charge is a 
crushing burden, and until 1900 the debt was constantly 
growing. Now that Spain no longer has the task of holding 
distant colonial possessions, she may conclude to reduce her 
absurd army system and to use the money for the develop- 
ment of the intellect of the people and of the resources of 
the land. When she does so, a rapid prosperity is assured, 
and the national debt will no longer be alarming. 

The Spaniards, however, are still unwilling to give up their 
army. They hope, in case of a European war, to recover 
Gibraltar from England and perhaps to incorporate Portugal, 
and they feel also that they must be prepared for Carlist and 
Socialist rebellions. Spain still has ambitions, moreover, to 
extend her colonial possessions in Africa, and she looks with 
hungry eyes at Morocco across the straits. 

Just before the loss of the Spanish colonies, Castelar expressed the 
hopes of tlioughtful Spaniards in effective words : " When we turn our 
eyes to the sad past and compare it with the present, we see what may 
be accomplislied without trying to fulfill Utopian dreams. . . . Men 
who have seen an absolute monarchy, see to-day a democratic monarchy. 
Men who once scarcely dared express their thoughts, can write to-day 
anything that they wish. Men who were once dismissed from the uni- 
versities for proclaiming free thought and scientific truth have the right 
to-day to teach what they believe. . . . We may well be content with 
the work of the last forty years." 

B. Portugal. 

502. Historical Survey. — When Napoleon I seized Portugal 
(1807), the royal family of the Braganzas fled to Brazil, the 
most important of Portugal's dependencies ; and after the ex- 
pulsion of the French, King John preferred to rule the home 
country from the colony. The Portuguese were deeply dissat- 
isfied with this arrangement, and, after the Spanish Revolution 
of 1820, they rose for a constitution. To save his European 
crown, the King left his son Pedro to rule Brazil, and returned 



§503] PORTUGAL. 513 

to Portugal, accepting the radical constitution which the Revo- 
lutionists had drawn up (1821).^ The Queen and her younger 
son Miguel plotted to restore absolutism, and, for j^ears, Portugal 
was distracted by revolutions and civil wars. King John died 
in 1826; and Pedro, the heir, preferring to keep his Brazilian 
crown,^ abdicated the throne of Portugal in favor of his infant 
daughter Maria, having first granted a charter less radical than 
the constitution of 1821, but more workable. Miguel seized 
the crown, and held it for six years ^ (1829-1835). Finally he 
was driven out, but not until Pedro had come to Portugal to 
act as regent for his daughter, resigning the throne of Brazil 
to his son Pedro 11.^ Turmoil and civil strife, mixed up with 
the Carlist wars in Spain, continued until 1851. Since the 
middle of the nineteenth century, however, Portugal has been 
at peace, and has made some progress in constitutional govern- 
ment. English influence is dominant in foreign relations, so 
that Portugal is, in practice, almost an English protectorate. 

503. Conditions : Political, Religious, Educational. — The Cortes 
consists of two houses. The Peers contain a hundred members 
appointed for life by the king, and fifty elected on a high 
property basis. The lower house is elected, and the franchise 
(since 1885 and 1901) is given to all adult males who can read 
or write or who pay a trifling tax, and to all heads of families, 
even if they have no other qualification. The king has a slight 
veto, called the " moderating power " : if the Cortes passes a 
bill he dislikes, he can suspend it until the next Cortes meets ; 
but if it is then passed again, it becomes law. 



1 This document was modeled upon the Spanish Constitution of 1812. 

2 In 1823 a secret treaty between Brazil and Portugal had agreed that the 
two crowns should never again be united. 

3 In these six years, according to the claims of the Liberals, seventeen 
thousand men were put to death and more than twice that number were 
transported or imprisoned for political opinions. 

4 The wise rule of this prince was the last remnant of monarchy in America, 
outside the shadowy survivals in the English colonies. It lasted until 1890. 
Then the people of Brazil demanded a Republic, and Pedro resigned the throne, 
winning the admiration of the world by his dignified moderation. 



514 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 504 

Catholicism is the state religion (indeed, there are only a 
few hundred Protestants in the country), but all religions are 
tolerated. Portugal, too, has had its kulturkampf, and educa- 
tion has been taken away from the church. On paper, education 
is universal and gratuitous, but in practice the children of the 
poorer classes do not attend school. The schools themselves 
are still very poor, and Portugal is as illiterate as Spain. 

504. Problems : Economic, Colonial, Military. — Despite these 
backward conditions, Portugal is making some progress toward 
better things. The population, including that of the Azores 
and Madeira, which are in all respects part of the kingdom, is 
about five and a half millions (census of 1890), and it is rapidly 
increasing. The counti-y is naturally rich, but the mines and 
other natural resources are poorly developed, owing to igno- 
rance, poverty, and lack of enterprise. 

Portugal's foreign possessions are still extensive (in the 
Verde islands, in Africa, and in India), but they do not pay 
expenses financially, and it is doubtful if so poor a country can 
afford to keep them. Their administration, too, is very bad. 

Finances are in a deplorable condition. In 1893 Portugal 
was obliged to suspend payment of two-thirds the interest on 
her national debt.^ The government has had an annual deficit 
for several years, and European Powers are liable to intervene 
to secure payment of the debts due their citizens.^ Portugal, 
it would seem, must abandon her army, and perhaps sell her 
colonies. 

Probably the chief reason for not giving up the army is fear 
lest Spain might seize the country, so closely allied to herself 
in race and language. A federation between the two states 
would be a natural solution of the problem, and would make 
possible a stronger and cheaper government for both ; but the 
Portuguese dread any kind of union, fearing to be swallowed 
up in the larger state. The government wishes a considerable 

1 Of course the balance is added each year to the debt. 

2 In 1894 France withdrew her representative from Portugal because of dis- 
satisfaction at the treatment of French creditors. 



§506] HOLLAND AND BELGIUM, 1815-1830. 515 

armed force, also, to suppress anarchistic plots, of which there 
have been many in recent years. ' 

For Further Eeading. — Seignobos, Europe since 1814, 286-324; 
Phillips, Modern Europe, 21, 22, 84-90, 122-129 ; recent Year Books and 
Annual Encyclopedias. Longer and very readable accounts are given 
in Hume's Modern Spain, Curry's Constitutional History of Spain, 
Hannay's CasiJe^ar, and Stroebel's Spanish Bevolution of 1868-1874. 

Special Keport. — Important events since 1900 in Spain and Portugal. 



II. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. 
A. The Union of 1815.^ 

505. Unfortunate Nature of the Union. — In 1815, the various 
provinces of the ancient Netherlands were once more united, by 
the Congress of Vienna ; and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 
so formed, received a constitution similar to the French Char- 
ter of 1814. The union proved ill-advised. The northern 
provinces (Holland, or the United Provinces) were Dutch in 
race and language, and Protestant in religion. The southern 
provinces (Belgium) were French in blood and tongue, and 
Catholic in religion. In industries, also, the two regions had 
different interests. 

Moreover, Belgium was more democratic than Holland, and, 
though the richer and more populous half, it had been forced 
to receive a Dutch king and was ruled largely by Dutch 
officials.^ Dutch was the language of the court and of the 
government, and representation in Parliament was so arranged 
that Belgium had the smaller influence. 

506. The Separation in 1830. — In 1830, after the French 
Revolution, Belgium revolted against Dutch rule. The " Three 
Days of July " in Paris were followed by the " Four Days of 
September" in Brussels. Dutch officials and the Dutch army 

^ For the earlier division of the two countries, see § 222. 
2 In 1830, only 11 out of 117 ofifieials in the Department of the Interior 
were Belgian, and only 288 out of 1967 army oflacers. 



516 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 507 

were driven out, and a Provisional Government called together 
a National Assembly. In 1831 this body drew up a constitu- 
tion, — at the time, the most liberal in Europe, — and called to 
the throne Leopold of Coburg, a wise and able prince. With 
the support of England and France (§ 400), these arrange- 
ments were confirmed, despite the bitter hostility of Holland ; 
and Belgium became an independent kingdom. 

B. Belgium. 

607. The Constitution is that of 1831, with a few amend- 
ments which will be noted. It contains an admirable bill of 
rights. The king acts only through ministers; and by cus- 
tom the ministers are "responsible," and must resign if out- 
voted in Parliament.^ The Parliament contains two houses. 
Both are elective ; but part of the Peers are chosen indirectly 
(by local councils), and the rest must own a large amount of 
property. The franchise has been subject to three amend- 
ments, and in late years it has been connected with the other 
important question in Belgian politics, — the kulturkampf, 

508. Franchise, the Kulturkampf, and Parties. — In 1831 the 
franchise rested upon the payment of a considerable tax. When 
the revolutions of 1848 were upsetting so many governments, 
Belgium made only a slight reduction in this qualification for 
voting. For nearly fifty years there was no further change ; 
but meanwhile great city populations were growing up, with 
masses of artisans who had no votes. Indeed, in the eighties, 
only one man in ten had the right of suffrage, and agitation 
began for further extension of the franchise. The proposal 
secured little support in Parliament, however, and bill after 
bill was voted down. In the early nineties the discontent of 
the Radicals became violent. In 1893 the Labor party declared 
a general strike, in order to exert political pressure, and the 

1 The firm establishment of parliamentary government was due in great 
measure to the liberal disposition and wisdom of Leopold, whose long reign 
was a model for all constitutional kings. Leopold was succeeded in 1865 by 
his son, Leopold II. 



§508] BELGIUM. 517 

crowds of unemployed men in Brussels about the parliament 
house threatened serious riots. The militia was called out, 
but it showed a dangerous disposition to side with the rioters. 
Under such conditions the Parliament yielded and passed the 
present franchise law, providing for manhood suffrage, tvith 
plural votes for wealth and education. Each man has one vote ; 
two votes are given to each man over thirty-five years of age, 
if he possesses certain wealth, or if he is the head of a family 
with children; and three votes are given to men of high edu- 
cational qualification and to those who have held important 
public office. 

The new franchise produced unexpected results. From 1850 
to 1884 the leading question in politics had been whether state 
or church should control education. The Liberals were in 
power the greater part of the time, and, by one bill after an- 
other, they took the schools wholly away from clerical influ- 
ence. This resulted, however, in the growth of a large Clerical 
party; the Liberals became badly divided over the proposed 
extension of the franchise ; and, in 1884, the Clericals came into 
power and began to restore church control over education. 
J ust before the franchise law of 1893, the Chamber of Repre- 
sentatives stood ninety-two Clericals and fifty Liberals. The 
election of 1894 returned one hundred and four Clericals, fif- 
teen Liberals and thirty-three Socialists. Of the two million 
votes cast, over a third were "plural votes," and these very 
largely reenforced the Clericals. That party at once carried 
its policy to complete victory. A new education bill (1895) 
placed the public schools under the supervision of the church, 
and provided state support for the church schools. 

In 1899, a further electoral reform introduced proportional 
representation, — a method which attempts to secure a fair 
share of representatives for minorities, instead of shutting 
them out altogether ; * and in the next elections (1900) the 



1 This device is admirably explained ia the International Year Book for 
1900, page 119. 



518 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 509 

Socialists made still further gains. The old Liberals have 
practically disappeared, and the iield is left to the two ex- 
tremes, — the Clerical Conservatives and the Socialists. This 
is not a condition favorable to orderly progress, and for some 
years Belgian politics have been marked by unrest and tumult. 

509. Relations to France. — Belgium is among the leading industrial 
countries. The population is about six and a half millions, and it has 
nearly doubled since 1815. A considerable party looks forward to an- 
nexation to France ; and, in case of a general European war, with conse- 
quent territorial rearrangements, this might be brought to pass. Germany 
and England would be strongly opposed to such action.^ 

C. Holland. 
The Kingdom of the Netherlands. 

510. Constitution and Politics. — Since 1830, Holland has 
experienced no violent change. In 1848 a new constitution 
replaced the one of 1814, and in 1896 the electorate was ex- 
tended. The royal family belongs to the great House of 
Orange, and the nation is loyally devoted to it.^ The Parlia- 
ment keeps the ancient name of the States General. The 
upper house is chosen by the local legislatures of the various 
provinces for nine years, one-third going out each third year.''' 
Its powers are very slight. The House of Representatives is 
elected directly by the people; and since 1896 practically all 
men of twenty-five years have the franchise, except vagabonds 
and paupers and sometimes unmarried sons in the poorer fami- 
lies. The kings have kept some control over the ministries, 
but under the recent regency and the reign of a girl, ministers 
are becoming truly " responsible " to the Representatives. 



1 For Belgium and the Congo State, see § 586. 

2 The present sovereign (1907) is Wilhelmiiia, who succeeded to the throne 
in 1890, at ten years of age. In 1900 she married. 

3 This arrangement of partial renewals of a bi-anch of the legislature, which 
has been adopted in many countries, as in our Senate, seems to have origi- 
nated in Holland under her ancient constitution. 



§ 512] HOLLAND. 519 

The leading question in politics in the second half of the 
nineteenth century was the kulturkamj)f. About one-third 
the population are Catholics, and they and the Protestant Con- 
servatives show some disposition to unite against the Liberals, 
who desire to exclude religioxis control from the schools. 

511. Conditions and Problems. — Holland is rich and prosper- 
ous. The population is a little over live millions, and it has 
grown in the last century even faster than that of Belgium. 
The colonial empire, despite the great losses in the wars of the 
French Revolution, is still vast and produces large revemies. 

From time to time there has been talk of a desire on the part 
of Germany to annex Holland. The House of Orange will die 
out with the childless Queen, and a German Prince will prob- 
ably claim the throne as the lawful heir. But the Dutch, 
though allied to the Germans in speech and blood, are proud of 
their separate nationality and their free institutions, and would 
fight vehemently against absorption by the larger Power. On 
a recent occasion, when annexation talk was prevalent, a Dutch 
paper published a significant cartoon showing the dikes cut 
and the land flooded, with the tops of the helmets of the Ger- 
man army just visible beneath the waves. Germany would 
have to reckon also with France and England. 

For Further Reading. — Seignobos, 229-255 ; Phillips, 187-199 ; 454, 

Special Reports. — 1. Elections and parties in each state since 1900. 
2. Recent political questions and happenings. 

III. THE SWISS REPUBLIC. 
A. History from 1789 to 1848.^ 

512. Conditions before the French Revolution. — The Peace of 
Westphalia (1648) had recognized the independence of the thir- 
teen Swiss cantons. They had already been independent in fact 
for two centuries and a half, and they remained without further 
change a hundred and fifty years more. During most of this 



1 For a review of earlier Swiss history, see § 161. 



520 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. r§ 513 

time tlie history of these isolated districts was far from happy. 
The sovereign cantons were divided into hostile groups by con- 
flicting democratic and aristocratic preferences/ and, after the 
Reformation, by bitter religious differences, while within, 
many of the single cantons — the wealthier and more aristo- 
cratic ones — there were incessant class struggles. 

513. The Helvetic Republic and the Act of Mediation, 1798- 
1815, — After the beginning of the French Revolution, the 
democratic revolts grew more general, and in 1798 the French 
Directory took advantage of the dissensions to occupy the 
country and to consolidate the squabbling communities into a 
centralized democratic state, under the name of the Helvetic 
Republic (§ 355). The constitution, however, ignored alto- 
gether the ancient self-government of the separate ca,ntons, and 
so proved unpopular. Civil war broke out between the Feder- 
alists, or the upholders of the old arrangement, and the Central- 
ists, or adherents of the new government; and in 1803, after 
conferring with the different leaders. Napoleon imposed upon- 
the nation a wise compromise. His Act of Mediation gave to 
each canton a separate constitution, — modifying the old aris- 
tocratic ones, however, in the interests of liberty, — and it 
provided for a central Diet with authority to compel obedience^ 
to its laws.. At the same time, six new cantons were added, by 
raising subject or allied territories to the same rank as the old 
thirteen states. 

514o The Federal Pact of 1815. — Napoleon's fall carried with 
it the fall of the Act of Mediation. The aristocratic cantons 
wished to recover their old subject territories, and the conserv- 
ative elements wished to do away with all French reforms ; 
while the new cantons, of course, were willing to fight for the 



1 The original "Forest Cantons" were pure democracies and governed 
themselves by folkmoots, or primary assemblies of all the people. In Bern, 
Luzern, and some other cantons, a few families had obtained exclusive pos- 
session of the government, so that the rule was an hereditary oligarchy. In 
other states the city inhabitants controlled the government, while the rural 
inhabitants had no political rights. 



§ 516] SWITZERLAND — REFORMS OF 1830. 521 

existing constitution. Finally a compromise was effected 
through the influence of the Congress of Vienna, and the Fed- 
eral Pact was adopted. This constitution resembled in general 
character the old Articles of Confederation of the American 
States. The union was a loose confederacy, with emphasis upon 
state sovereignty and with less strength in the central govern- 
ment than there had been under Napoleon's constitution. The 
Congress of Vienna added to the union three new cantons, 
taken from French and Italian territory, and so raised the 
number of states to twenty-two, as at present. 

515. Reform of the Constitutions of the Cantons in 1830. — 
Under the Federal Pact, each state was free to make its own 
constitution, and several of the more aristocratic ones returned 
to the ancient governments of the eighteenth century. Dis- 
orders, of course, began again, similar to those preceding the 
French Eevolution ; but in 1830, after the second revolution in 
France, popular risings compelled the aristocratic cantons to 
adopt liberal constitutions. For the next three years the Radi- 
cals (as the democratic party was called) attempted also to 
compel a change in the national government; but for the time 
the effort failed, and the Federal Pact remained the constitu- 
tion of the union until 1848. 

516. Religious Strife, 1830-1847. — The next change grew out 
of religious strife. The reorganized cantons of 1830 were 
Protestant, and now they became radical in politics. The old 
democratic cantons were Catholic, and were coming to be con- 
trolled by a new Clerical party. Hostility between the Catho- 
lics on the one side and the Protestants and Free Thinkers on 
the other, threatened to split in twain not only the Confederacy, 
but also some of the cantons themselves. Many armed con- 
flicts took place, transferring authority in a given canton from 
one party to another, and Switzerland was soon organized in 
two camps. 

The final struggle began in Aargau. In this canton, in the 
election of 1840, the Radicals won. The Clericals rose in 
revolt; and, in punishment, after suppressing the rising, the 



522 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 517 

Eadicals dissolved tha eight monasteries of the canton. This 
act was contrary to the Federal Pact ; and the seven Catholic 
cantons^ in alarm formed a separate league, — the Soyider- 
'bund, — dun^ declared that they would protect the Clericals in 
their rights in any canton where they might be attacked. 

517. The Sonderbund War. — For the Sonderbund to exist at 
all was practically to dissolve the union ; for it to take this tone 
was to threaten war between two distinct governments. In 
1847, the Federal Diet, now controlled by the Eadicals, replied 
to the challenge by calling on the Sonderbund to dissolve and 
by ordering the expulsion of the Jesuits from Switzerland. 
The Sonderbund withdrew its deputies from the Diet, and war 
was begun (1847).^ The despotic Powers were preparing to 
interfere in behalf of the Sonderbund (§ 400), and did furnish 
it with arms and money, but the Unionists (warned and 
encouraged by the English government) acted with remarkable 
celerity and crushed the Secessionists in a three weeks' cam- 
paign, before foreign intervention had seriously begun. Met- 
ternich still intended to interfere, but the revolutions of 1848 
rendered him harmless. Then the Radicals expelled the 
Jesuits, remodeled the constitutions of the conquered cantons, 
so as to put power into the hand of the Eadicals there, and 
adopted a new national constitution. 

The constitution was submitted to a popular vote, and received a large 
majority. It needed a majority of the cantons as well as of the people, 
and it was announced to have been adopted by fifteen cantons. In one 
of the fifteen, however, the vote was given only by a government installed 
by force of arms, and in four of the others the majority was made by 



1 Including the original " Forest Cantons." 

2 There are many interesting points of likeness and also of contrast between 
the party strife and civil war in Switzerland and that a little later in the 
United States. In both countries there was a conflict between a national and 
a states' sovereignty party. In both, as a result of war, the more progressive 
part of the nation forced a stronger union upon the more backward portion : 
in both, too, the states which tried to secede did so in behalf of rights guar- 
anteed them in the old constitution, which they believed to be endangered by 
their opponents. Students may be led to see other likenesses. 



§518] SWITZERLAND — THE CONSTITUTION. 523 

counting Yes all those voters who failed to vote. The change in the 
government, like the adoption of our fourteenth amendment, was in 
considerable degree a war measure. 



B. Switzerland To-day. 

518. The Constitution of 1848. — By the new constitution, 
which with slight amendments is that of to-day, the union 
became a true Federal Republic. 

The Federal Assembly, or national legislature, has two houses, 
— the Council of the States and the National Council. The first 
consists of two delegates from each canton. The delegates are 
chosen by the cantonal legislatures, by whom also their term 
of office is fixed and their salaries are paid. This Council 
represents the states' rights principle, and in form it is a survival 
of the old Diet. The other parts of the constitution, however, 
are neAV and tend toward nationalism. The second house of 
the legislature, the National Council, represents the people of 
the union; and the members are elected in single districts, like 
our Representatives, for a term of three years. The franchise 
is given to all adult males, and elections take place on Sundays, 
so that all may vote. 

The Federal Executive is not a single president, but a com- 
mittee of seven ^ (the Federal Council), whose members are 
chosen by the Federal Assembly. One of the seven, especially 
named for the purpose, is the President of the Council; but he 
possesses little more authority than the other members. The 
Federal Council acts somewhat as an English ministry, except 
that its powers are much more limited. Besides attending to 
the usual duties of an executive, it helps frame bills and it 
takes part in legislative debates ; but it cannot dissolve the 
legislature, and it need not resign if its measures are rejected. 

There is also a Federal Judiciary, chosen by the Federal 
Assembly ; but it lacks the power of our American Supreme 

1 This is in accordance with the ancient practice of the separate cantons. 



524 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 519 

Court to declare laws void : it is bound to accept as valid all 
acts of the legislature. 

Each Canton has its own constitution and government. In a 
few cantons, the old folkmoot, or primary Assembly, is still 
preserved ; in the others, the legislature consists of one cham- 
ber,^ chosen by manhood suffrage. In all there are executive 
councils. The subdivisions of the cantons enjoy a large 
amount of democratic self-government. 

519. Direct Legislation. — As a rule, even in modern demo- 
cratic countries, the people govern themselves only indirectly : 
they choose representatives (legislatures and governors), and 
these few delegated individuals attend directly to all matters of 
government. Radical democratic thinkers, however, demand 
that some way be found for the people themselves to take a 
direct part in law-making ; and so far, Switzerland, more than 
any other country, has shown how this may be done. The two 
Swiss devices for this end are known as the refereyidum and 
the popular initiative. 

Historically the referendum is the older. It consists merely 
in referring laws that have been passed by the legislature to a 
popular vote. This practice really originated in America. The 
State of Massachusetts submitted its first constitution to a 
popular vote in 1778 and in 1780, and there were a few other 
applications of the principle in America at about the same 
time. A little later, the French Revolutionists adopted the 
practice for their constitutions, and the plebiscites of the 
Napoleons extended the principle to some other questions be- 
sides constitutions.^ In America since about 1820 nearly all 
our states have used the referendum on the adoption of new 
constitutions and of constitutional amendments, and there has 
been a growing tendency to submit other important measures 

1 A two-chambered legislature is contrary to Swiss practice, and the plan 
was adopted in the national constitution, from the United States, to reconcile 
the claims of the adherents of states' rights and of the Nationalists. 

2 The French Constitution of the Year I provided for a referendum on ordi- 
nary laws; but this constitution never went into effect. Cf. § 339. 



( 



§ 519] SWITZERLAND — DIRECT LEGISLATION. 525 

to popular decision, both in state and city governments. But 
in Switzerland the practice goes farther. By the Constitution 
of 1848, all constitutional amendments, cantonal or national, 
must be submitted to popular vote, and in some cantons this 
compulsory referendum is extended to all laws; while, by an 
amendment of 1874, a certain number of voters by petition may 
require the submission of any national law. This last provision 
is known as the optional referendum, and it has been in use in 
the separate cantons for most of the nineteenth century. 

The popular initiative is a purely Swiss development. It 
consists in the right of a certain number of voters by petition 
to frame a new bill and to compel its submission to the people. 
A little before 1848, this device began to be regarded as the 
natural complement of the referendum. Four cantons had 
already made some use of it, and the new Constitution of 1848 
required all cantons to permit it in constitutional amendments, 
if a majority of voters took part in a petition. The cantons 
rapidly adopted more generous measures than this, however, 
and, by 1870, in nearly all of them a small number of voters 
could introduce any law they desired. In 1891, by amendment, 
this liberal principle was adopted for the national government: 
a petition of fifty thousand voters may frame a law, which must 
then be sidmiitted to a national vote. 

Thus the people can act directly, without the intervention 
of the legislature : they can frame bills by the initiative, and 
pass on them by the referendum.^ These devices for direct leg- 
islation are the most important advances made in late years by 
democracy. The referendum has worked well, both in federal 
and cantonal governments, and the voters have shown them- 
selves rather more conservative than the legislature. It must 
be remembered, too, that since the Swiss executives have no 
veto, it is especially fit that the people should have one : and 

1 A good account of the referendum and initiative in Switzerland is given 
in Seignobos, Europe since 1S14, 271-279 and 283-284. A very full account, 
including analysis of bills passed and rejected, is given by Lowell, Govern' 
ments and Parties, II, 238-300. 



626 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 520 

this is particularly the case in cantons M'here the legislature 
has only one chamber. The initiative also has been successful 
in the cantons, but on the national scale it has been on trial too 
short a time to permit a safe judgment upon its value. 

520. Social and Political Prosperity. — Switzerland fills a far 
larger place in political history than her territory does on the 
map. Since 1848 the Swiss have been one nation. The de- 
feated party quickly accepted the result of the Sonderbund 
war in good faith, and now all Swiss look upon each other as 
fellow-countrymen. In the last half-century Switzerland has 
made amazing advances, and to-day it is one of the most pro- 
gressive countries in the world. The schools are among the 
best in Europe, and no other country has so little illiteracy. 
Comfort is well diffused. The population increases rapidly, 
and in 1896 it numbered three and a third millions. The 
army system is a universal militia service, lighter than is 
known anywhere else in Europe. 

Two-thirds of the people are Germans ; but French and 
Italian, as well as German, are " official " languages, and the 
debates in the Federal Assembly are carried on in all three 
tongues. Race feeling, which is so disintegrating a force 
in Austria, works no harm in Switzerland. The universal 
patriotism of the people is a high testimonial to the strength 
of free institutions and of the flexible federal principle, in 
binding together diverse elements. 

"The Swiss Confederation, on the whole, is the most successful democ- 
racy in the world. Unlike almost every other state in Europe, it has no 
irreconcilables, — the only persons in its territory who could in any sense 
be classed under this name being a mere handful of anarchists, and 
these, as in our land, are foreigners. The people are contented. The 
government is farsighted, efficient, economical, and steady in its policy. 
. . . Corruption in public life is almost unknown, and appointments to 
office are not made for political purposes. Officials are selected on their 
merits, and are retained as long as they can do their work ; and yet the 
evils of a bureaucracy scarcely exist. . . . The Swiss statesmen deserve 
the highest praise for their labors, and the greatest admiration for their 
" success ; but we must beware of thinking that their methods would pro- 



§621] DENMARK. 527 

duce the same results under different conditions. The problem they have 
had to solve is that of self-government among a small, stable, and frugal 
people ; and this is far simpler than self-government in a great, rich, and 
ambitious nation." — Lov^'ell, Governments and Parties, II, 334-336. 

"Is Switzerland not already in her vi^ay a miniature parliament of 
man? ... It is the vi^ill of the Swiss people and their fixed determina- 
tion which keep them united. Consider the mixture of races and religions 
which they represent. Of the twenty-two cantons, thirteen are German- 
speaking ; four are Prench ; in three, German and Trench both are 
spoken ; in one, Italian ; and in another, Romansch. The population of 
German Switzerland is almost purely Teutonic ; that of French Switzer- 
land, about half and half Teutonic and Celto-Roman ; while Italian and 
Romansch Switzerland can boast of Celto-Roman, Ostro-Gothic and even 
Etruscan elements. Some of these cantons are Protestant, others Roman 
Catholic, and others, again, have a mixed population of both faiths. 
If these incongruous, often antagonistic, cantons can meet upon some 
common plane and conform to some common standard, can live side by 
side in peace and prosperity, surely tue task of some day uniting the 
nations of the world upon a similar basis is not altogether hopeless and 
chimerical." — McCrackan, The Bise of the Swiss Bepublic, 363. 

Foe Further Reading. — Seignobos, Europe since 1814, 255-284 ; 
Lowell, Governraents and Parties, 180-336; Wilson, The State; recent 
Year Books, Annual Encyclopedias, and Reviews. Fuller accounts may 
be found in McCrackan, Bise of the Swiss Bepublic ; Adams and Cun- 
ningham, Swiss Confederation ; Winchester, Swiss Bepublic; and Vin- 
cent, State and Federal Government in Switzerland. 

IV. THE SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOMS. 
A. Denmark. 

521. Survey to i866. — In the later Middle Ages, Denmark 
was an elective monarchy distracted by feudal anarchy. In 
1660, after a shameful defeat by Sweden, Frederick III called 
a Diet, to which he invited representatives of the towns and 
the clergy, and with the aid of these elements he took away 
much of the power of the nobles. The Diet authorized him to 
establish a charter, and he set up an hereditary absolutism. 

There was no further change, except in matters of territory, 
until well into the nineteenth century. After 1831, the four 



528 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 522 

provinces of the kingdom were given " provincial estates '' to 
advise with the monarch ; and in 1848, the king felt obliged 
to grant a modern constitution. For many years, all energies 
were turned toward retaining the Schleswig-Holstein territory 
(§ 466) ; and not until after the defeat ^ of 1864 did Denmark 
begin to have any real constitutional development. When 
the matter of the duchies was settled, a Democratic party 
(" Friends of the Peasants ") at once began to demand reform, 
and, after two years of clamor, a constitution was established. 

522. Constitution and Politics. — The constitution of 1866 promises 
freedom of speech and of the press, and creates a Diet (Rigsdag) of two 
houses. The Landthing, or upper house, is composed partly of members 
appointed by the king, partly of members elected on a very high property 
basis. The Folkthing, or lower house, is elected by manhood suffrage.^ 

Since 1873 there has been a long contest over the question of minis- 
terial responsibility. The lower house, controlled by the Democratic 
parties, passed a resolution, declaring it to be "a necessary condition of 
constitutional monarchy" that the king choose a ministry "in harmony 
with the people's representatives." This was the English practice, which 
had now become established in several other countries. The King replied 
that he was entitled to keep a ministry which was supported by either 
house of the legislature, and he virtually took up Bismarck's theory of 
the right of the king and the upper house to rule without the consent of 
the lower chamber (§ 465). From 1877 to 1891 the government raised 
taxes and passed laws without regarding the lower house, ruling much of 
the time by martial law. Then the Democratic party split into factions, 
and the King's party secured control in the lower house also (1894). The 
conflict, however, will undoubtedly be reopened. 

Iceland, the only important Danish colony, received a constitution in 
1874 and a larger measure of "home rule" in 1893. Since the latter 
date it has had its own Diet, and it no longer pays taxes into the Danish 
treasury. 

B. Sweden and ISTorway. 

523. The Establishment of the Dual State (1815). — For some 
centuries before 1814, Norway had been a dependency of Den- 
mark. The Congress of Vienna gave it to Sweden, to reward 

1 Compare with the case of Austria after 1866, and France after 1870. 

2 All self-supporting men, thirty years of age, can vote. 



§ 525] SWEDEN AND NORWAY. 529 

that country for services against Napoleon. But between 1810 
and 1814 a national feeling had been growing up in Norway, 
and the people declined to be bartered from one ruler to an- 
other without their own consent. A Diet assembled at Eidvold, 
declared Norway a sovereign state, adopted a liberal constitu- 
tion, and elected a king {May 17, 181Jf). Sweden, backed by 
the Powers, made ready to enforce its claims, and finally a 
compromise was arranged. The recently elected king abdi- 
cated, and the Diet elected the Swedish king as King of Nor- 
way, on condition that he should recognize the new Norwegian 
constitution. 

Thus Norway and Sweden became a dual monarchy. The 
union was looser, however, than that of Austria-Hungary. The 
two countries had the same king, but they had no shadow of a 
common ministry and nothing to correspond to the Austrian Dele- 
gations (§ 492). Each kingdom kept its own constitution and 
its own legislature. The arrangement lasted almost a century. 

524. Swedish Politics in the Nineteenth Century. — Until after 
1850 the Diet in Sweden was composed of four estates,— 
nobles, clergy, citizens, and peasants, — ■ so that the king could 
easily play off one class against another. Such a legislature 
could not check royal power. But in 1866 this arrangement 
was replaced by a modern parliament of two houses. The 
upper house is elected by district councils, and only men of 
large property are eligible. The lower house is elected by all 
men who pay taxes on an annual income of about $225. This 
franchise excludes a large part of the adult males from voting. 
In 1895 there began a vehement agitation in Sweden for a 
reduction of the tax qualification by one-half, while Socialist 
and Radical parties appeared, calling for universal suffrage. 
Recently (January, 1907) this demand has promised success ; 
but Sweden is still much more aristocratic, both in politics and 
in society, than Norway. 

525. Norway : Struggle for Self-government ; Separation from 
Sweden. — In 1814 the Norwegian legislature (Storthing) was 
chosen on the basis of a low property qualification ; and since 



530 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§525 

1884 it has been elected by manhood suffrage. It assembles 
as one house, but divides itself for most pntposes into two 
chambers. The king of the dual state could not dissolve it, 
and a bill became law in spite of his veto, if passed in three 
successive annual sessions. 

The chief interest in Norwegian politics in the nineteenth 
century lay in the agitation for a greater amount of self-gov- 
ernment. Except for one period of about thirty years in the 
middle of the century, the contest was incessant, and after 
1872 it grew increasingly bitter. In the early part of the 
century the Storthing succeeded in abolishing nobility in ISlor- 
way, after two vetoes by the King. In the latter part, the two 
chief points of dispute were (1) the Storthing's control of the 
ministry and (2) a separate consular service. 

In 1872-1874 the Storthing passed a bill three times, order- 
ing the ministers to attend the debates and requiring them to 
resign if outvoted. King Oscar II ^ declared truly that this 
was an amendment to the constitution, and therefore a change 
in the compact between the two countries : in such a case, he 
urged, the rule limiting his veto could not apply. He offered, 
however, to yield the point if the Storthing would give the 
ministry the power of dissolution, — which elsewhere goes 
with ''ministerial responsibility," — so that the government 
might appeal to the voters when it wished. The Storthing 
refused all compromise. The King declined to recognize the 
law. The Storthing impeached the ministers, and civil war 
seemed at hand ; but a new election in 1884 showed that the 
Norwegians were almost unanimous in the demand, and the 
King yielded, after a twelve years' struggle. 

. 1. Oscar II came to the throne in 1872, just before the^.ojwegian national 
movement became violent, and his wise moderation and his fairness had much 
to do with preventing an armed conflict, whicli impetuous men on eitlier side 
were ready to precipitate. He is one of the greatest men wlio have sat upon 
European thrones in tlie last century. Foreign nations have paid a deserved 
tribute to his ability and fairness, by requesting him frequently to act as 
arbitrator in international disputes. The United States has been interested 
in some of these arbitrations. 



§ 525] SWEDEN AND NORWAY. 531 

By this success the Storthing transferred the real executive 
power for all internal affairs into the hands of its own commit- 
tees. It passed on at once to a demand for power to appoint 
Norwegian consuls, separate from the Swedish service, so as to 
secure partial control over trade relations. This demand also 
seemed to the King to involve a change in the constitution, — • 
which put the regulation of foreign affairs into his hands, — 
and the Swedish party claimed that the proposed arrangement 
would virtually ruin the slight union that remained between 
the two countries. 

The struggle waxed vehement. In the course of the con- 
test, the Norwegians removed the symbol of union from their 
flag (1886-1888), after passing the bill to that effect each year 
for three sessions, and both countries at times made prepara- 
tions for war. Indeed, Norway erected a great and costly line 
of fortifications on the frontier toward Sweden. 

Suggestions began to be heard for Norwegian independence. 
Before the close of the century a strong political party avowed 
that end, and the nation soon came to unite in that policy. 
In May, 1905, when once more a long negotiation for separate 
consular service had failed, the Storthing, by unanimous vote, 
decided to provide by its OAvn act for Norwegian consuls. 
This was virtual secession, and the King refused to recognize 
it. The Storthing then declared the union dissolved, and set; 
up a provisional government. The aristocratic elements in. 
Sweden called for war; but King Oscar was nobly resolute 
that his two peoples should not imbrue their hands in each 
other's blood, and the Swedish labor-unions threatened a uni- 
versal strike to prevent a violent coercion of their Norwegian 
brethren. Therefore when, in July, the Norwegians declared 
in favor of independence in a great national referendum, by a 
vote of 368,000 to 184, Sweden bowed to the decision; and in. 
September, 1905, to the eternal honor of both peoples, a peace- 
ful separation was fully arranged upon friendly terms. 

Thus Norway became an independent nation. A small 
party wished the new nation to become a republic ; but, in a 



532 THE SMALL STATES SINCE 1815. [§ 526 

second referendum, a large majority chose for king a Danish 
prince, who was crowned in June, 1906, as Haakon VII. 

When Norwegian independence was mooted in the nineteenth 
century, many friends of Scandinavia feared lest Sweden, if 
so weakened, might fall a prey to Russia, which had already 
swallowed up so much Swedish territory. But Russia's col- 
lapse in the war with Japan (§ 591) had removed this peril for 
the time ; and further safeguards are now being sought (1907) 
either in the " neutralization " (cf. § 377 h, note) of the Scan- 
dinavian states by the European Powers, or in a new and true 
federation between the three Scandinavian kingdoms. 

526. Internal Conditions. — Norway has two and a quarter 
millions of people; Sweden, more than twice as many.^ Sweden 
is also the richer country. The Norwegians, however, have 
the larger merchant navy, — more than four times as large as 
Sweden's, and the fourth in size in all Europe. This was one 
reason why Norway felt it had a special interest in controlling 
the consular service. Norwegian authors, like the novelist- 
statesman Bjornson and the poet Ibsen, stand in the front 
ranks of European literature, and such facts, no doubt, helped 
to make the people more discontented with their recent political 
inferiority. 

There has appeared a small Republican party in Norway 
and also a Socialist party ; but this fact so far has aided the 
Conservatives. In all three Scandinavian kingdoms, until 
recently, the Democratic strength has been in the peasants, 
while the towns have been centers of Conservative power. 
But while the new Radicals in all three countries have gained 
some supporters in the towns, the peasants are alarmed at the 
idea of Socialism, and are passing over to some extent to the 
Conservative party. 



1 Each of the three Scandinavian kingdoms at least doubled in poj)ulation 
in the nineteenth century. This rapid growth of population is one of the 
striking plienomena of modern times. It has been made possible, of course, 
by the improved economic conditions and the growth of great cities with new 
kinds of employment for men. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Beconstruction without Revolution. — Judson. 

England in the nineteenth century has served as a political model for 
Europe. The English developed the p)olitical mechanism of constitutional 
monarchy., parliamentary government, and safeguards for personal liberty. 
Other 7iations have only imitated them. — Seignobos. 

I. CONDITIONS IN 1815. 

527. Absence of Progress in the Eighteenth Century : Parliament 

becomes the Organ of an Oligarchy Except for the romantic 

acquisition of a vast world-empire (§§ 283-284), the eighteenth 
century was singularly uninteresting in English history. In 
the study of England to 1689, attention has been called to the 
preeminence of that country in social and political progress. 
The nineteenth century was to witness a further glorious ad- 
vance ; but in order to appreciate its story, we must understand 
that the period between was one of retrogression. Erom 1689 
to 1815, England did not simply stand still : she went back- 
ward, in both political and social conditions. 

There was some slow gain for ministerial government (§ 252) 
in place of royal government, — though that principle was by 
no means carried to perfection,^ — but in all other political 
matters there was a positive loss. Parliament had never been 
democratic, of course; but after 1689 it shriveled up more and 
more into the selfish organ of a small oligarchy of landlords. 

1 Professor Seeley says very truly of the great Pitt that he was not made 
minister because he had a majority, but he had his majority because he had 
been made minister. This suggests the condition of Spain in 1900 (§ 499) . 

533 



534 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§527 

Each of tlie forty counties of England, large or small, sent 
two representatives to Parliament, as did also nearly two hun- 
dred and fifty parliamentary boroughs.^ There were also one 
hundred members from Ireland and forty-five from Scotland. 
The older kings had summoned representatives from whatever 
boroughs they chose, but gradually a borough which had been 
sending delegates secured the right, by custom, to continue to 
send them ; and this held good, even if, in the change of cen- 
turies, the place had utterly decayed. 

The case was the worse, because the Tudor Kings, in order better to man- 
age the Parliaments, had summoned representatives from a great number 
of little hamlets which never had just claim to representation, but which 
from the first were "pocket boroughs," — owned and controlled by some 
lotd of the court party. Then, too, in earlier English history, the south 
of the island with its fertile soil and its Channel ports had been the 
populous district ; but in the eighteenth century, with the growth of 
manufactures, population had shifted to the coal and iron regions of the 
north and west. Before 1800, great cities had grown up there ; but they 
could get no representation in Parliament, because, after 1660, the kings 
had lost their old right to make parliamentary boroughs, just when that 
power might have been exercised to public advantage. 

Thus the conditions had become unspeakably unfair and cor- 
rupt. Dunwich was under the waves of the North Sea, which 
had gradually encroached upon the land, but a descendant of 
an ancient owner of the soil still possessed the right to row 
out with the sheriff on election day and choose himself as 
representative to Parliament. Old Sarum was once a cathe- 
dral city on the summit of a lofty hill ; but new Sarum, or 
Salisbury, a few miles away on the plain, drew the population 
and the cathedral to itself until not a vestige of the old town 
remained. Then the grandfather of William Pitt bought the 
soil where Old Sarum had stood, and it was for this '' pocket 
borough " that the great Pitt entered Parliament.^ So, Gatton 

1 A few of the boroughs had come to have only one representative, and this 
vras true also of the twelve counties of Wales. ; 

2 It was wittily said at the time, that the Pitt family had "an hereditary I 
seat in the House of Commons." 



§527] CONDITIONS IN 1815. 535 

was a park, and Gorfe Castle a ruin; and the list might be 
considerably extended. 

Then there were a great number of '^rotten boroughs" — ■ 
petty villages or little towns, with six, or a dozen, or fifty, 
voters.^ Some of these, too, were ''pocket boroughs," where 
the voters were dependent upon a neighboring landlord,^ and 
always returned his nominee without the form of a contest. 
Often these borough owners sold the parliamentary seat as a 
regular part of their revenue, — usually, of course, to a member 
of a particular political party. 

The condition was as bad or worse when these small bor- 
oughs were independent of a landlord. The right to vote in 
them was determined by varying and quaintly fantastic rules 
and by historical accidents (which even in the larger towns 
shut out all but a fraction of the inhabitants^), and the few 
privileged voters usually sold the seat in Parliament for their 
own benefit, with less conscience than the single proprietors 



1 A petition for reform in 1793 stated that seventy members were chosen 
for thirty-four places " in which it would be trifling with patience to mention 
any electors whatever, the election being notoriously a matter of form " ; 
ninety more came from places of less than fifty voters each. The Annual 
Register for 1793, pp. 83-103, gives the document. 

2 In 1828 at Newark the Duke of Newcastle drove out five hundred and 
eighty-seven tenants who had ventured to vote against his candidate. Com- 
plaint was made in Parliament, but the Duke answered calmly, " Have I not 
a right to do what I like with my own ? " 

3 It was not living in a town any length of time that gave a man the right 
to vote, but some one of about a dozen complex qualifications. Molesworth 
{Reform Bill, 107, note) counts fifteen of these peculiar qualifications; Med- 
ley, 197-199, has a good classification of them. In Weymouth, in 1826, the 
rightito vote went with the right to share in the rents of certain ancient village 
property; and so twenty persons, some of them paupers, voted because of 
their title each to one-twentieth of a sixpence. Portsmouth, with forty-six 
thousand people, had only one hundred and three voters. Lord John Russell, 
who framed the great Reform Bill of 1832, says in his Recollections that there 
were regular dealers in borough seats (borough mongers) , who bought up the 
borough tenures whenever possible, so as to reduce the number of "freemen " 
to be dealt with; and he adds that if a man refused to sell, " it was not an 
uncommon practice to blow up his house with gunpowder, and so disfranchise 
a political opponent." 



536 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 527 

used. In 1766 the corporation of Sudbury advertised in the 
public press that the parliamentary seat was for sale to the 
highest bidder. 

Then, it must be remembered that until 1832 by far the 
greater number of large cities sent no representatives at all. 
This was true for Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, 
and indeed for nearly all the manufacturing centers of the 
west and north of England, though some of them had come to 
have one hundred thousand inhabitants. 

These were the conditions that Lord Russell referred to in 1832 in a 
speech introducing the Reform Bill (§ 531), when he asked the House 
to consider the amazement of a stranger who had come to observe the 
boasted representative institutions of England, and who was taken to a 
ruined mound and was told that that mound sent two representatives to 
Parliament, and then taken to a stone wall with three niches in it, and 
told that those niches sent two representatives to Parliament, and then 
taken to a green park with many signs of flourishing vegetable life but 
none of human habitation, and told that that park sent two representa- 
tives to Parliament, while he would see populous towns full of enterprise, 
industry, and intelligence, which, he would be told, sent no representatives 
to Parliament. 

The case was not quite so bad in the counties; but here, 
only the freeholders^ could vote, and the smaller freeholders 
usually feared to offend a powerful neighbor. Moreover, when 
there were two candidates, and a real contest, the voting was 
viva voce, and the polls were kept open two weeks, so that 
there was every chance for the sale and purchase of votes. In 
many counties there were very few voters, and in Scotland, in 
the county of Bute, with fourteen thousand people, it is said that 
at one time, aside from the absentee landlords, there was only 
one voter. A humorous account tells how this one man went to 
the polling place, made a nominating speech for himself, voted 
for himself, and then declared himself unanimously elected. All 
Scotland, with two million people, had not over three thousand 

1 The freeholders, too, comprised only a small part of those who corre- 
spond to landowners with us. 



§528] CONDITIONS IN 1815. 537 

voters, and the Irish members of Parliament were nearly all 
nominated by landlords. 

Thus the boasted representative system of England had 
become, in Macaulay's words, "a monstrous system of repre- 
sented ruins and unrepresented cities." In 1800, one hun- 
dred and ninety-seven patrons controlled a majority of the 
whole house. The Duke of Norfolk could fill eleven seats. 
An estimate, generally accepted, says that four hundred and 
eighty-seven of the six hundred and fifty-eight members were 
really nominees of single individuals. The House of Commons 
was hardly more representative than the House of Lords. 

528. Retrogression in the Condition of the "Workers. — The suf- 
ferings of the working class from 1450 to 1600 have been noted 
(§§ 234, 235). The seventeenth century was a period of pros- 
perity ; and the middle class, both merchants and country 
gentry, continued to grow rich through the eighteenth century ; 
but after 1760 there began another deplorable falling off of 
prosperity for working men, both in country and in town. 

a. Rural Conditions. Personal serfdom and servile land 
tenure had disappeared from England at a time when they still 
flourished vigorously on the continent; but it is not certain 
that the English workman of to-day is better off in conse- 
quence. The recently freed peasantry of the continent now 
hold the land their fathers tilled as serfs, and legislation and 
custom tend to keep them in possession. In England the peas- 
antry became landowners four centuries ago, but their descend- 
ants have lost all hold upon the soil. This evil tendency 
had begun in Tudor times (§ 234) ; but the government of that 
age at least tried to check it, and, before 1600, new economic 
conditions had practically put a stop to it. After 1700, how- 
ever, and especially after 1760, the movement began again, 
and it was intensified by the selfish class-legislation of the 
landlord Parliaments. Law after law " inclosed " the old 
" common lands," essentially for the benefit of landlords, 
depriving small landowners of a place to graze their cattle. 
This made it harder for the peasants to maintain themselves, 



538 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 528 

and forced them to sell out, while the wealthy merchants and 
gentry were anxious to buy, because political power and social 
position both rested upon the possession of large estates. 
Moreover, the improved methods and costly machinery of the 
new landlords could not be adopted or competed with by the 
small holders, who were therefore under constant economic 
pressure to sell.^ 

In 1700, despite previous inclosures, there were still one 
hundred and eighty thousand small freeholders in England, 
who with their families comprised a million people, or nearly a 
fifth of the whole population at that time ; and there were a 
still larger number of other small proprietors known as '' copy- 
holders " (§ 234). By 1800, these classes had almost disap- 
peared. They drifted to the towns, to swell there the unhappy 
class that is yet to be described, or they remained to till the 
landlord's land, living on his estate as cottagers, subject to 
r-emoval at his order. On the other hand, another class of laws 
(providing for " entail " and " right of Primogeniture ") pre- 
vented the breaking up of the great estates even if the owners 
wished to sell. So the large estates grew larger, and could 
not grow smaller, while the small ones were eaten up, and 
England became, even more than before, the country of large 
landlords. 

Since this change, the classes connected with the land are three, — 
landlords, tenant-farmers, and laborers. The first class comprise a 
few thousand gentry and nobles. Each such propiietor divides his estate 
into " farms," of from a hundred to thre4 hundred acres, and leases them 

_ . - '\, 

1 Read Goldsmith's Deserted Village. It was the accepted policy of land- 
lords to buy out these poorer neighbors. Aia eighteenth century treatise on 
The Duty of a Steward contains the injunction, " He should not forget to 
make the best inquiry into the disposition of the freeholders, within or near 
any of his lord's manors, to sell their lands." A popular rhyme of the period 
expresses the feeling of the poorer classes : — 

" The law locks up the man or woman 
Who steals the goose from off the common ; 
But leaves the greater villain loose 
Who steals the common from the goose." 



§528] CONDITIONS IN 1815. 539 

out to men with a little capital, who are known as "farmers." This 
second class work the land directly, with the aid of the third class, who 
have no land of their own, but who labor for day-wages. 

The landlords as a rule pride themselves upon keeping up their estates. 
They introduce costly machinery and improved methods of agriculture 
more rapidly than small proprietors could, and they furnish some of 
the money necessary to put farms and buildings into good condition ; 
while their own stately homes, encompassed by rare old parks, give a 
beauty to rural England such as no other country knows. The farmers, 
as compared with the farm-laborers, are an aristocracy, and, by any 
standard, they are a prosperous class ; but, of course, they have always 
been largely influenced by their landlords, 

b. TJie Artisan Class. During nearly the same period 
(1760-1830), while the freeholders were disappearing, there 
took place also a change in manufacturing so marked that it is 
known as the Industrial Revolution. Until 1760 almost all 
manufactures were practically hand-made, as the name signi- 
fies. In the first half of the eighteenth century, each farm- 
house eked out its income by hand-weaving and spinning and 
by other simple home manufactures ; while even in the towns 
the making of cloth was carried on by great numbers of mas- 
ters, each with two or three journeymen and apprentices work- 
ing under his personal supervision and perhaps living in his 
household. But about 1760 English inventors began to re- 
place the single hand-wheel with great machines driven by 
water power. The new machinery was costly and called for a 
large, organized force of workmen. Thus the gap between em- 
ployer and workman was widened immensely. Manufactures 
were centralized and came under the direction of large capital- 
ists, while great smoke-hung factories sprang up, with perhaps 
thousands of artisans packed in one of them, to work amid 
the incessant whirl of steam-driven spindles and looms. A 
like change followed rapidly in other manufactures, and the 
old "domestic system" (§ 235) was suddenly replaced by the 
"factory system."^ 

1 Cheyney's Industrial and Social History, 188, describes the domestic sys- 
tem, and, 203-213, the new inventions and the factory system. 



640 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 528 

The change of course has been of supreme benefit to the 
world and to the working classes as a whole. It has made 
possible more life and better life. In England alone there are 
tens of millions of men and Avomeu more than could subsist 
there but for these mechanical inventions ; and the wages of 
this vast population have risen greatly in purchasing power. 
But it is also true that, from time to time, new inventions 
with their new processes have worked great loss to whole 
classes of laborers, whose only capital was their skill in the 
old processes, and who through no fault of their own have been 
reduced from honorable independence to misery. And never 
has that loss been so general as in the great change just before 
1800. The old hand-weavers could not understand the drift 
of the times. Great numbers of them maintained a losing 
fight, under harder and harder conditions;^ and at intervals, 
for many years, laborers rose in riots, to smash machinery and 
burn factories. 

But the more serious evils of this period were felt, not by 
the old operators, but by the new factory workers, and in a 
degree that has never since been paralleled. The rapid growth 
of city populations created problems which at first received 
no attention. Water supply, drainage, and cleanliness were 
all ignored, and proper housing did not exist. The masses 
of workmen and their families dwelt in denlike garrets and 
cellars, bordering upon crowded pestilential alleys, in perpet- 
ual filth, misery, and disease. Moreover, while the old society 
by slow growth had fitted itself in some measure to the needs 
of the working man, the old customs were wholly unsuited to 
these new conditions. The English courts for a long time 
treated all labor unions as conspiracies and sent the members 
promptly to prison. Thus the artisan class was kept in iinor- 
ganized hordes, almost wholly at the mercy of employers who 
had no close touch with them and who were engaged in a new 
and mad race for wealth. 

1 George Eliot's Silas Marner is founded in part upon this fact. 



§528] CONDITIONS IN 1815. 541 

Until after 1700, England was still essentially the old rural England. In 
1700 Bristol was the second city of the kingdom, and it had only twenty- 
nine thousand inhabitants, while almost no other city except Loudon con- 
tained more than five or six thousand people. After 1800, England almost 
at once became a land of cities. A like change, of course, was to take place 
in all civilized lands, but even yet it has nowhere else occurred so sud- 
denly or on so large a scale. England led the way and had to face the 
first and the greatest transformation. In 1700 the population of England 
and Wales was between four and five millions. During the eighteenth 
century it doubled, rising to 8,893,000 in the census of 1801 (the first reli- 
able census), and most of this growth was in the last thirty years of the 
century. In the next fifty years, the population doubled again, 
amounting in 1851 to 17,928,000 and in the second half of the century 
it very nearly doubled once more, amounting in 1901 to 32,526,000. No 
other country but the United States has experienced such an increase, 
and in no other did the rapid growth begin until England had done much 
to solve the new problems. The figures given above are for England 
and Wales. The "United Kingdom," including Ireland and Scotland, 
contained about 41,605,000 people in 1901. 

Fob Further Eeading. — On industrial conditions an excellent con- 
cise treatment, especially designed for high school students, is to be found 
in Cheyney's Industrial and Social History of England, 20.3-223. Fuller 
discussions are given in Toynbee's Industrial Bevolution, Gibbins' Indus- 
trial History of England, and Cunningham and McArthur's Outlines of 
English Industrial History. Advanced students may consult Lecky's 
England in the Eighteenth Century, Walpole's England since 1815, and 
Cunningham's Groioth of English Industry and Commerce, II. 

On the political conditions, the treatments are usually interwoven with 
the account of the Reform Bill (§§ 539 ff.), and the references are given 
on page 554. The student at this point may read with profit Seignobos, 
10-17, or McCarthy, Epoch of Beform, 25-29. 

Exercise. — Note the transitions in rural labor in England: (1) serf 
and villein labor to about 1350, and then a decay of that system until it 
disappears, about 1450 ; (2) inclosures (for sheep farming), driving a large 
part of the peasantry from the soil, 1450-1600, — overlapping (3) another 
period of "inclosures" which changed the old common holdings into in- 
dividual holdings, 1550-1640 ; then, after a prosperous period, (4) the 
new period of inclosures for large farming, 1760-1830. (The recent at- 
tempts to restore the peasantry to the soil will be noted in § 554.) 

Note also the transitions in manufacturing (which hold good also for 



542 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 529 

other countries besides England) : (1) the gild system to about 1550 ; 
(2) the domestic system to about 1760 ; (3) the factory system. 
Review the industrial history of modern Europe as a whole. 

II. POLITICAL REFORM. 

Tlie sixteenth century had seen a new absolutism rise upon the ruins of 
the old feudalism and the old church. The struggle of the seventeenth 
century had resulted in replacing this absolutism with representative gov- 
ernment highly aristocratic in character. Then, by natural decay, without 
any special design, this had hardened into the narrow oligarchy of the 
eighteenth century. The nineteenth century was to see the rebellion and 
victory of democracy. 

A. The Central Government. 

529. Beginnings before 1815. — The failure of Parliament 
to represent the nation had long been recognized by progres- 
sive men as an evil ; and the only reason why reform had not 
been accomplished was that all energies were given to the long 
French wars, which filled most of the period from 1689 to 1815. 
At each important interval in the conflict, efforts at reform 
were begun. In the twelve years in the middle of the century, 
between the French war and the American Revolution, and 
again in the seven years between that and the French Revolu- 
tion, the Whig leaders seemed determined upon wise and 
temperate changes. But with the mutterings of the French 
Revolution, reaction set in. The excesses of the Revolutionists 
turned the English middle class vehemently against all change : 
and reform slumbered for forty years more (1790-1830). 

In 1766 the elder Pitt declared that Parliament must reform itself from 
within, or it would soon be reformed "with a vengeance from without," 
and during the next few years many mass meetings were held to induce 
Parliament to act. Indeed, the war with America was connected with the 
determination of George III not to allow this claim in England, George 
felt that his two indolent a:id gross predecessors had allowed kingly power 
to slip from their hands, and he designed to regain it and to be a king in 
fact as well as in name. Of course, the corrupt nature of Parliament 
favored him : it would be much easier to control such a Parliament than 



§ 529] DEMAND FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 543 

one representing the whole nation. Therefore, when just at this time the 
Americans began to cry "No taxation without representation," King 
George felt it necessary to put them down. If their claim were allowed, 
then certainly so must that of Manchester and all new towns in England 
be granted ; but if the demand could be made to seem a treasonable one 
on the part of a distant group of rebels, then the King could check the 
movement in England also and perhaps become the master of Parliament. 
This consideration explains wliy King George took such an active part 
against America. When the American war was over, however, in 1783, 
the younger Pitt took up the work for reform. " Parliament," he vehe- 
mently asserted, " is not representative of the people of Great Britain. It 
is representative of nominal boroughs and exterminated towns, of noble 
families, of wealthy individuals, of foreign potentates" ; and he declared 
that this composition of Parliament alone had made it possible for the 
government to wage against America " this unjust, cruel, wicked, and dia- 
bolical war." In the years that followed, he introduced three bills for 
reform, until the French Revolution shelved all prospect of success.^ 

This check was particularly unfortunate because it came just 
when the evils of the Industrial Revolution were becoming seri- 
ous. The sudden and enormous growth of population in the 
factory towns, together with the piling up of taxation ^ to sup- 
port the wars against Napoleon, called imperatively for new 
adjustments. But the Tory party, which had stubbornly carried 
England to victory through the great war with the continent 
of Europe, was utterly unfit to cope with internal questions. 
Its leaders looked upon every privilege and every time-sanc- 
tioned abuse as sacred. Even after the fall of Napoleon, they 
angrily or sullenly refused to listen to projects for reform, and 



1 After this, only a few Radicals without influence kept up the struggle. 
In 1780, the Whig Duke of Richmond, an ardent sympathizer with America in 
the war, introduced a hill for annual elections, equal electoral districts, and 
manhood suffrage ; but such proposals never received serious consideration. 
In 1790, on the occasion of a very moderate proposal for reform, the keynote 
of the opposition was struck by a spealcer who exclaimed, " Would a wise man 
select a hurricane season to repair his house, however dilapidated? " 

2 National taxes in the first years of the nineteenth century are reported to 
have absorbed a fifth of the whole national income. In recent years they take 
less than one-twentieth, and they produce many returns, such as public edu- 
cation, not then afforded. 



644 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 530 

except for the admission of Catholics to political rights (1829), 
and for some reform of the atrocious penal code/ nothing was 
accomplished until 1830. 

530. From 1815 to 1830. — The peace of 1815 was followed 
by a general business depression, accompanied by many labor 
riots and disorders, and by radical political agitation. The 
Tory government met these conditions with stern repressive 
laws, forbidding public meetings without the consent of the 
magistrates, under penalty of death, suspending habeas corpus, 
and suppressing debating societies.^ In 1819, at a great public 
meeting at Manchester, the people were charged by the yeo- 
manry,^ through a stupid blunder of an officer, and several 
score of unarmed men and women were trampled under foot 
or sabered. This was the " Peterloo Massacre." The govern- 
ment thanked the yeomanry, and ordered the orator of the 
meeting to trial for conspiracy. 

531. 1830-1832: the First Reform Bill. — In 1830, King 
George IV was succeeded by his brother William IV. William 

1 The English penal code of the eighteenth century has been fitly called a 
" sanguinary chaos." Its worst faults, like the abuses of the rotten borough 
era in politics, were due to the English dislilie for change. Whenever in the 
course of centuries a crime had become especially troublesome, some Parlia- 
ment had fixed a death penalty for it, and then no later Parliament had ever re- 
vised the code. In 1660, the number of "capital crimes " was fifty (three and 
a half times as many as there were in New England at the same time under 
the much slandered " blue laws "), and by 1800, the number had risen to over 
two hundred. To steal a sheep, to snatch a handkerchief out of a woman's 
hand, to cut down trees in an orchard, were all punishable by death. In 1823, 
Sir Robert Peel, the Tory leader, began the reform of this atrocious system, 
by removing the death penalty from a hundred offences. The reform was due 
to a long agitation carried on by Romilly. Lecky, English History in the 
Eighteenth Century, VI, 247 ff., gives an admirable account of conditions. 

2 In 1812, two editors were condemned to a year's imprisonment for saying 
that a rival paper had been guilty of exaggeration in calling the Prince of 
Wales an Adonis; and between 1808 and 1821, ninety-four journalists were 
punished for libel or seditious utterances, twelve of them being condemned 
to transportation to penal colonies. An interesting account of government 
prosecutions of men who signed petitions for parliamentary reform is given 
in Rosebery's Pitt, 163. 

3 A name now given to cavalry militia, organized on an aristocratic basis. 



§531] riRST EEFORM BILL, 1830-1832. 545 

was supposed to be more liberal in his opinions than the pre- 
ceding king, and the reform party was greatly encouraged. 
During the parliamentary elections, too, came the French Revo- 
lution of 1830, and its success and moderation probably aided 
the Whig candidates. 

When the new Parliament met, the Whigs at once intro- 
duced a motion for a reform of the representation. The prime 
minister, Wellington, declared in reply that the existing legis- 
lature answered " all purposes of good legislation to a' greater 
degree than any other legislature in any other country, at any 
time." He had never read or heard anything, he said, which 
could in any way satisfy him that the representation "could 
be improved." 

This speech cost the hero of Waterloo his popularit}^ In a 
few days the Tory ministry resigned, and the Whigs came into 
power, with Earl Grey ^ as prime minister, pledged to Parlia- 
mentary reform. Lord John Russell ^ drew the bill and man- 
aged it in the House of Commons. It aimed (1) to distribute 
representation more fairly, and (2) to extend the franchise.^ 

a. The absurd apportionment was remedied (1) by taking 
away representation from fifty-six " rotten boroughs " (with 
less than two thousand people each) and by taking one mem- 
ber from each of thirty more small boroughs (under four 
thousand people), and then by creating forty -three new bor- 
oughs to include the new cities. London was made to consist 



1 Earl Grey was a stately English lord, whose eloquence in the trial of 
Warren Hastings, over forty years earlier, has been celebrated by Macaulay. 

2 Lord Russell was not yet a peer. He was the son of a duke, and the title 
Lord was a title of coixrtesy. But " Lord " Russell at this time was a com- 
moner and sat in the House of Commons. Later in his life, he was a great 
prime minister. During the American Civil War he was the member of the 
English ministry most directly responsible for carelessly letting the Alabama 
escape, to prey upon the commerce of the Union, — a fact which he afterward 
admitted and apologized for. 

3 The manner of voting was not changed, except by providing separate 
polling places for subdivisions of the counties and by liniiting the time to two 
days. The ballot was not introduced, because of Grey's objections. 



546 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 531 

of four boroughs with eight representatives. The larger coun- 
ties received new members, according to their population, and 
the representation of Scotland was increased. 

6. The suffrage in the boroughs was given to all " £10 
householders,"^ and, in the counties, to the farmers, who 
rented lands. Thus the artisan class in the towns, and the 
ordinary laborer in both town and country, were still left out. 

Such a measure seems mild^ enough to-day, but to the 
Tories it then seemed to threaten the foundations of society. 
The debates were imrivaled in fierceness, and lasted month 
after month. In March, 1831, the ministry carried the second 
reading^ of the bill by a majority of one vote ; but it was plain 
that they could not save it from hostile amendment, and they 
decided to dissolve Parliament and appeal to the country for 
better support. The King was extremely opposed to a new 
election so soon, and a passionate scene took place between 
him and his ministers ; but he was forced to give way, and so, 
incidentally, it was settled that the ministry, not the king, 
really dissolves Parliament. 

The dissolution was hailed by the radical elements with 
wild rejoicings, because it showed that the ministry meant to 
stand or fall on the issue of reform. Illumination was general, 
and a mob smashed the windows of the residence of the Duke 
of Wellington because they were not lighted. The Liberals 
went into the elections with the program, " The Bill, the whole 
Bill, and nothing but the Bill " ; and, despite the unrepre- 
sentative nature of Parliament, they secured an overwhelming 
majority. In June, Lord Eussell introduced the bill again. 

1 All who owned or rented a house worth ten pounds rental a year. 
Lodgers and men living in tenements were still excluded. 

2 Lord Russell in his Recollections rather apologizes for its timid nature. 
" I had," he says, " like many others, somewhat of a superstitious reverence 
for a system which seemed entwined with our liberties." Indeed the English 
people have had and still have a "superstitious" regard for old institutions 
and an instinctive aversion to change. 

8 A bill must pass three readings. Amendments are usually considered 
after the second. 



§532] THE LORDS — THE MINISTRY. 547 

In despair, the Tories used all tactics of delay, but in bep- 
tember the bill passed the CommoQS by a vote of 345 to 239. 
Then the Lords voted it down. 

One session of the second Parliament was gone. There was 
passionate outcry against the Lords, with vehement demands 
for the abolition of that house. There was much violence, too ; 
and England seemed on the brink of a violent revolution. 

The same Parliament met for a new session in December, 
and Lord Russell again introduced the bill. It passed the 
Commons with an increased majority ; and this time the Lords 
passed its " second reading," but immediately afterward they 
tacked on some unfriendly amendments. Already, sixteen 
new peers had been made to strengthen the Whigs ; and now 
Lord Grey demanded authority to create enough more to save 
the bill. The King refused, and Grey resigned. There fol- 
lowed eleven days of peril and no-government. The Tories 
tried to form a ministry, but could not get one able to secure 
a majority or with any hopes of securing a majority by a new 
election. There were mobs and tumults even about the King's 
carriage. It was feared that William and Welliiigton might 
try a coup d'etat, and it seems certain that the Whigs went so 
far as secretly to prepare for civil war. Finally, however, the 
King recalled the Whig ministry. 

William still urged, however, that he be allowed other meas- 
ures than the creation of new lords, and he offered to use his 
personal influence with the peers to secure the bill. Happily, 
Earl Grey was resolute to show where the real sovereignty 
lay ; and finally the King signed the scrap of paper (still 
exhibited in the British Museum) on which the Earl had 
written, " TJie King grants permission to Earl Grey . . . to 
create such a number of neio peers as loill insure the passage of the 
Reform Bill.'' This ended the struggle. The Tory lords with- 
drew from the sessions, and the bill passed, June 4, 1832. 

532. Constitutional Settlements : the Lords ; the Ministry. — 
Incidentally the long contest over the Reform Bill had settled 
two other points in the constitution. 



548 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 532 

a. It had shown how the Lords could be controlled,^ and it 
made clear the subordinate nature of that house in the consti- 
tution. When the Commons have passed a bill, the Lords 
may throw it out once; but if the Commons pass it again, 
after an appeal to the country, the Lords must give way.^ 

b. It finally settled the relation of the monarch to the min- 
istry, and showed that the ministers are not his ministry, 
except in name, but that they are really the ministry, or ser- 
vants, of the House of Commons. This principle has never 
since been threatened. The king acts only through the minis- 
ters. Even the speech he reads at the opening of Parliament 
is written for him, and without consulting him ; and he cannot 
change a phrase in it. 

The way in which a change in ministry is brought about 
should be clearly understood. If the ministry is outvoted on 
any matter of importance, it must resign. If it does not do so, 
and claims to be in doubt Avhether it has really lost its majority, 
its opponents will test the matter by moving a vote of " lack of 
confidence," and if this carries, the ministry takes it as a man- 
date to resign. There is only one alternative : if the ministry 
believes that the country will support it, it may dissolve Par- 
liament, and " appeal to the country.'" If the new Parliament 
gives it a majority, it may go on; if not, it must at once give 
way to a new ministry. 

In form, the new ministry is chosen by the king, Hit in 
reality, lie simply names those zvhom the will of the majority 
in the Commons has plainly p)ointed out. Indeed, he names 
only one man, whom he asks to " form a government." This 
man becomes prime minister (Premier), and he selects the 
other ministers. Usually, in a parliamentary election, Eng- 
lishmen really vote also for the next prime minister, just 

1 Gladstone (§ 546) used the same method once afterward. 

2 This has been the invariable practice since, except on Gladstone's " Home 
Rule" bill just before his retirement from public life in 1894 ; and this bill, on 
its second appearance, was so altered as to afford the Lords an excuse to claim 
that the nation had not really been consulted (§ 552). 



§533] THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT. 549 

as truly, and about as directly, as we in this country vote for 
a President.^ 

A curious feature to the American student is that all this complex 
procedure rests only upon custom, nowhere upon a written constitution. 
The group of ministers who meet to determine the policy of the govern- 
ment are commonly called the Cabinet. Neither this body nor its func- 
tions are ever referred to in any written law ; but, in reality, the Cabinet 
is the " Government," and is often referred to by that title. 

The dissolution, it should be remembered, is a sort of referendum 
(§ 517), and it affords the people a better chance to express their will 
upon particular issues than we usually get in America. 

533. Absence of Agitation for Further Parliamentary Reform 
until the Sixties, except for the Chartist Movement. — The " First 
Reform Bill," gave votes to six hundred and fifty thousand 
citizens, or to about one man out of six.^ It enfranchised 
the middle class, and shifted political power from a narrow 
and selfish oligarchy to a liberal aristocracy. It was the most 
important of the three great reform bills (§§ 534, 535), because 
it insured the success of the others, with many more reforms. 
England has not been in the remotest danger of violent revo- 
lution during the revolutionary nineteenth century, except 
for a few months during this first struggle in 1831-1832 ; 
and Parliament, which had previously been so contemptuous 
of public opinion, now became quickly responsive to that 
force. 

For thirty-five years, however, there was no further change 
in the franchise. The Tories at once accepted the result of 
1832 (as the Conservative party in England always does, when 

1 If the king asks any oue else to form a ministry but the man whom the 
Commons have accepted as their leader, probably the man asked will respect- 
fully decline to act. If he tries, he will fail to get other strong men to join 
him, and his ministry will at once fail. If there were any real uncertainty as 
to which one of several men were leader, the matter would be settled by confer- 
ence among the leaders, and the ministry would, of course, include all of them. 
In 1902, Balfour was chosen by the Conservatives in such a conference. 

2 France, after tlie Revolution of 1830, with over twice as large a popula- 
tion, had less than a third as many voters (§§ 413, 414) ; and, until shortly 
before, few American states had had much more liberal provisions. 



550 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 533 

a new reform has once been forced upon tliem), but planted 
themselves upon it as a finality; and even the Whigs, who 
were by no means democrats and who were absorbed in using 
their new power to carry out social reforms, agreed in this 
" finality " view regarding Parliamentary reform.^ A few eager 
Radicals in Parliament for a time kept up a cry for a more 
liberal franchise, but soon they gave up the contest, to take 
part in the great social legislation of the period (§§ 542-545). 

But outside Parliament, and outside the sovereign middle 
class, lay the masses of workingmen, who knew that the vic- 
tory of 1832 had been won largely by their sympathy and 
public demonstrations, and who felt that they had been cheated 
of the fruits.^ This class continued restless and discontented; 
but they lacked leadership, and, in ordinary times, their claims 
secured little attention. Two marked periods of agitation 
there were, however, at intervals of nearly twenty years, — 
just before 1848 and again before 1867. The first was futile ; 
the second led to the Second Eeform Bill. 

The earlier of the two agitations is the famous Chartist move- 
ment. Even before the Pirst Reform Bill, there had been an 
extensive agitation for a more radical change, and the extrem- 
ists had fixed upon six points to struggle for: (1) manhood 
suffrage, (2) equal electoral districts, (3) abolition of all prop- 
erty qualification for membership in Parliament, (4) jDayment 
of members, (5) the ballot, and (6) annual elections.^ In 1837 
the Radicals renewed their agitation, and the " Six Points " were 
embodied in a Charter. The excitement grew for ten years,* 
and in the forties, many of these Chartists looked forward to 

1 In the Parliament of 1837 a Radical moved a resolution in favor of a fur- 
ther extension of the franchise ; but Lord Russell, speaking for the ministry, 
condemned it savagely, and only twenty-two votes supported it. 

2 Read an admirable treatment in Rose's Rifte of Democracy, ch. ii. 

3 To the average British " Liberal" of 1832, such demands seemed revolu- 
tionary, but the first, third, and fifth, and practically the second, have been 
adopted (§§ 535-537), while the fourth probably will be. The sixth is no 
longer demanded. 

* Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke is a powerful story of this period. 



§534] SECOND REFORM BILL, 1867. 551 

an armed rebellion. Men drilled and armed; and the govern- 
ment was terrified into taking stringent precautions. Forty- 
eight was the critical year: the Chartists adopted a resolu- 
tion, "All labor shall cease till the people's Charter becomes 
the law of the land " ; ^ but the plan for monster demonstra- 
tions, with great petitions and processions, fizzled out, and the 
"Year of Revolutions" saw no disturbance in England that 
called for more than a few extra policemen. The Chartist 
movement never revived from the disappointment. 

534. The "Second Reform Bill," 1867.— The next agitation 
took its rise from the suffering of the unemployed while the 
American Civil War cut off the supply of cotton and so closed 
the English factories.^ The progress of the intervening years 
appears in the fact that this time no one dreamed of force : 
the agitators could count safely on winning, through the 
rivalry of the two great political parties. 

In 1865 a new Parliament was elected. The " Liberals " (as 
the old Whig party was now called) Avere " in ofiice," and they 
were pledged to extend the franchise ; but the bill the leaders 
introduced was trifling and inadequate, and was finally smoth- 
ered by amendments. The ministry was discredited, and it 
resigned. Then Lord Derby (in the Peers) and Disraeli (in the 
Commons) "took office."^ The new ministry was Conserva- 



1 Cf. the strike in Belgium in 1893 to secure suffrage extension (§ .508). 

2 So, too, the distress after 1815 had assisted the First Reform Bill, and the 
intensity of the Chartist agitation in 1847-1818 rested mainly on economic 
distress (§ 544) . 

3 Lord Derby was prime minister, but, as he sat in the Lords, it was neces- 
sary to intrust some Commoner with special leadership in the lower house. 
This task fell upon Disraeli, who became (as is usually the case under such con- 
ditions) the real genius of the administration. By birth Disraeli was a Jew. 
He was an author, and a man of remarkable genius. He was " a Conservative 
with Radical opinions," as some critics said, while others insisted that he had 
no principles in politics. Carlyle, who was no friend to Parliamentary reform, 
expressed the general amazement at Disraeli's attitude and at his success in 
drawing his party with him — " a superlative Hebrew conjurer, spell-binding 
all the great lords, great parties, great interests, and leading them by the 
nose, like helpless, mesmerized, somnambulant cattle." 



652 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 535 

tive (or Tory), and really had no majority behind it. Of 
course, it could remain in power only by Liberal support. The 
ministers surrendered the old position of their party, and in- 
troduced a hastily drawn bill, Avhich, by the addition of sweep- 
ing amendments from the Liberals,^ was made a measure of 
far-reaching reform. 

The bill abolished a few remaining rotten boroughs, and 
reapportioned the seats so as to do justice to the large towns ; 
but its important feature lay in the extension of the franchise. 
Votes were now given in the towns to all householders ^ (owners 
or renters) and to all lodgers who paid ten pounds a year for 
their rooms. In the counties the franchise was lowered so as 
to include some small leaseholders, before excluded; but the 
chief effect was felt in the towns. Thus the bill gave the 
franchise to the artisan class, raising the number of voters to 
over three million, or to something over half the adult male 
population of that time. 

535. The " Third Reform Bill," 1884.— The unskilled laborers 
in town and country, and the male house-servants, still had 
no votes ; but England had taken a tremendous step toward 
democracy; and this victory of 1867, like that of 1832, was 
followed by a period of sweeping legislation for social reforms, 
— mainly in Gladstone's Liberal ministry, 1868-1874 (§ 546). 
Then, after a Conservative ministry, led by Disraeli and chiefly 
concerned with foreign matters (§ 547), Gladstone took office 
again, and the " Third Reform Bill " (1884) enfranchised the 
self-supporting but unskilled laborer and the servant class. 
Under this bill, all householders and all £10 lodgers, in 
town and country, have votes, — servants being regarded as 
" lodgers," 

This raised the electorate to over six millions, and (except 
for unmarried sons, without property, living in the father's 



1 Gladstone proffered ten amendments, all but one of which were accepted 
by the Conservatives. 

2 All who were listed for rates, or local taxes. 



§537] MINOR ELECTION REFORMS. , 553 

family) it enfranchised practically all self-supporting men. 
Since 1884, England has been a democracy.^ 

536. The Reapportionment of 1885. — The two previous Ee- 
form Bills had dealt both with the franchise and with reap- 
portionment. It had been designed that the Third also should 
do so ; but finally Gladstone separated the two measures, and 
the Third Eeform Bill dealt only with the suffrage. Then 
Gladstone and the Liberals lost office ; but the Conservatives 
took up and passed the other part of the reform measure 
(1885), redistributing the seats. Towns with less than fifteen 
thousand people lost their separate representation as boroughs, 
and Were merged in the counties in which they lay ; and the 
larger towns and counties were divided into districts, like our 
congressional districts, each containing, as nearly as might be, 
fifty thousand people.^ 

537. Minor Reforms Concerning Elections. — The great Parliament- 
ary Reform Bills have been completed by four minor measures, which 
have made English politics clean and honest to a remarkable degree. 

a. In 1S70, the secret ballot was introduced.^ The form adopted was 
the one known as the Australian ballot, from its use in Victoria. Many 
of the States of our Union have since then adopted the same model. 

6. Between 1S55 and 1870, the civil service loas thoroughly reformed. 
In earlier years, public offices had been given to reward political partisans, 
in as disgraceful a degree as ever marked our own politics. But since 
1870, appointments have always been made after competitive examina- 

1 It is well to fix clearly the nature of the three Eeform Bills. The First 
(1832) enfranchised the middle class (merchants, shopkeepers, professional 
men, etc., besides the gentry, freeholders, and members of borough corpora- 
tions, who had the franchise before). The Second (1867) enfranchised the 
artisans in the towns. Tlie Third (1884) enfranchised the unskilled laborers. 
In 1901, the number of registered electors was 6,822,585, or over one-sixth the 
population. In the United States the proportion is a little under one-fifth. 

2 To be absolutely accurate, the arrangement is not quite as simple or so 
fair as this. Towns of over fifteen thousand people but under fifty thousand, 
have one representative; towns between fifty thousand and one hundred and 
sixty-five thousand have two members ; and towns over one hundred and 
sixty-five thousand have one more for each added fifty thousand people. 

3 The delay in adoi^ting the ballot was due largely to a feeling among 
many Liberals that a man should not fear to announce publicly his choice. 



554 .ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ u38 

tions, and now no official is removed for party reasons. England had 
completed this great reform, so essential to good democratic government, 
just vrhen the United States began it. 

c. In 1868, Parliament turned over to the courts the trial of contested 
elections. In earlier times, when the kings sometimes attempted to con- 
trol the composition of Parliament (§ 238), it was needful for the Com- 
mons themselves to have the right of deciding between two men who 
claimed the same seat. Since the royal power had ceased to be danger- 
ous, that need had passed away ; and the decision of contested elections 
in Parliament, as in our legislatures still, was often marked by disgi-aceful 
abuses, — the decision generally being made by a strict "party vote," 
without any regard to the value of the opposing claims. In transferring 
these cases to the courts for more impartial consideration, England has 
led the way in a reform which other free countries will in time adopt. 

d. Bribery in elections, direct and also indirect, was effectively checked 
by the " Corrupt Practices Prevention Acf'' of 1883.^ 

EoR Further Reading. — On the First Reform Bill, the most brilliant 
brief account is Justin McCarthy's Epoch of Beform, 25-83, or perhaps 
the treatment in the same author's England in the Nineteenth Century. 
A clear statement is given in Seignobos, 23-37 ; and, of course, all the 
constitutional histories of England that deal with the nineteenth century 
are very full upon this topic. Lee's Source Book gives several pages of 
excellently selected extracts regarding the bill, including one of Russell's 
speeches and a letter from Macaulay. 

On the Second and Third Bills, a concise account is given by Seignobos, 
50-54, 64-66, and 82-84. More interesting treatments are to be found in 
McCarthy's History of Our Own Times and in the younger McCarthy's 
England iinder Gladstone. There is an excellent treatment covering the 
whole period in Rose's Bise of Democracy, and in Walpole's Electorate 
and Legislature. Walpole's England since 1815 (6 vols.) contains the 
most detailed account available. The present electoral laws are discussed 
clearly in Porritt's Englishman at Home. 

B. Local Government. 

538. Conditions in 1832 : Aristocratic, not Democratic. — The 

extensions of the franchise in 1832, 1867, and 1884 applied 
only to parliamentary elections, not to local government. In 
earlier centuries, local government in England had been jjojdu- 

1 Special report, for an advanced student. 



§5S9] LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 555 

lar self-government ; but between 1600 and 1800 this bad 
ceased to be true. Local government bad not been central- 
ized, as in France, but it bad utterly ceased to be democratic. 
Each local unit was still in local bands, but in the hands of th( 
local aristocracy, not of the people. 

a. TJie two rural units, the counties and the parishes, were 
altogether controlled by the country gentry of the locality con- 
cerned, without even the form of a popular election anywhere. 
Boards of Justices of the Peace, appointed for life by the crown 
from the most im^portant gentlemen of a county, managed all 
matters of county government, acting both as judges and as 
county commissioners ; while each parish was ruled by a ves- 
try of twelve gentlemen who formed a close corporation, hold- 
ing office for life and themselves filling vacancies on occasion. 
Both justices and vestrymen served at their own expense ; and 
this gentry rule was honest, public spirited, and generally popu- 
lar. It proved unequal, however, to the new demands of tha 
nineteenth century, and it deprived the mass of the people of 
all political training. 

h. In the towns, the government was usually vested in a 
mayor and a council, who were virtually self-elected for life. 
This rule by privileged bodies had long been indescribably 
corrupt. The "corporation," as the government was called, 
never represented any large part of the inhabitants. The mem- 
bers spent public funds as they pleased, — largely in salaries 
to themselves, and in entertainments and state dinners, — and 
they rented public property to each other at nominal prices, 
while all the pressing needs of the great and growing city 
populations were ignored. 

539. Municipal Reform. — The corrupt city government was 
the first to be reformed. Earl Grey's ministry in 1833 ap- 
pointed " a commission of inquiry " ; and, after the report of 
the commission in 1835, Lord Russell introduced a Municipal 
Reform Bill. The measure provided that a hundred and eighty- 
three boroughs (indicated by name) should each have a munici- 
pal council elected by cdl ivlio paid loccd taxes. The Lords went 



556 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 540 

wild witli dismay at this " gigantic innovation," and by votes of 
one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy to twenty 
or tliirty, they amended nearly every clause in the bill so as to 
make it worthless. The Commons refused the amendments; 
and after a four months' struggle ^ the Lords yielded. From 
time to time, through the century, new towns were added to 
the list, as need arose, and finally, in 1882, it was provided that 
any town might adopt this form of government for itself. 

The municipal reform of 1835 was immediate and successful. English 
town government ever since has been honest, efficient, and enlightened, — 
a model to all other democratic countries. The best citizens serve in the 
town councils ; the appointed officials, like the city engineer, city health 
officer, etc., are men of high professional standing, who serve virtually 
for life and are never appointed or removed for political purposes ; the 
government costs less and gives more than in American cities ; and the 
scandals that disgrace our city governments are unknown. The form of 
government is that known as the " Council Plan " : the mayor is hardly 
more than a presiding officer ; he is elected by the council, and he has no 
veto. The cities own their own water and lighting and street car sys- 
tems to a much greater degree than in America. ^ 

540. Reform in the Rural Units, in i888 and 1894. — In the 

counties and j)arishes, the old system of local administration 
broke down in the nineteenth century, under the burden of 
new duties. For a long time, however, the only reform at- 
tempted was to add a multitude of new appointive " Boards," 
such as sanitary commissioners and poor-law commissioners. 
These changes left the administration as aristocratic as be- 

1 At this time, O'Connell, the Irish agitator, started a movement to abolish 
the House of Lords. "It is impossible," said he, "that it should last, — that 
such a set of stupid, ignorant, half-mad fops and coxcombs should continue 
so to lord it." Like later agitation of this kind, however, despite some rap- 
turous applause from the streets, the suggestion was soon dropped. 

2 There is mucli good matter upon Englisli municipal government in the 
leading periodicals from about 1880. Especially worthy of mention is an 
article in the Forum (H : 267) by Joseph Chamberlain, entitled " Municipal 
Institutions in America and England." The best account in book form is 
Sliaw's Municipal Government in Great Britain. The student may read 
especially the account of Glasgow in that work. 



§540] LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 557 

fore, and tliey created a chaos of overlapping areas and con- 
flicting jurisdictions, so that they failed to give satisfactory 
results. 

Finally, in 1888, the Conservative ministry of Lord Salis- 
bury passed the County Council Bill, providing for the popular 
election of a Council for each county by all local tax payers.^ 
A new interest in local affairs followed, and the popular 
Councils began to change the face of England by their ener- 
getic government. Six years later, the last ministry of 
Gladstone extended this movement by the still more impor- 
tant Parish Councils Bill} These two laws have made local 
government in the rural units thoroughly democratic. The 
elements are four: (1) the parish has a primary assembly 
{^parish meeting) ; (2) the parishes with more than three hun- 
dred people have also an elective Parish Council ; (3) larger 
siibdivisions of the county, known as districts, have elective 
District Councils ; and (4) at the top is the elective County 
Council. 

The powers of all these local bodies are very great (§ 554). 
England is not only a democracy in fact in her central gov- 
ernment, but she is now also a democracy in her local admin- 
istration, ruling herself through several thousand of these 
freely chosen Councils. Women have the franchise in electing 
local Councils on the same terms as men, and they are eligible 
to serve in any but the County Councils. 



1 London had not been included in the previous municipal reform acts, but 
it was now made an " administrative county," and so obtained liberal self- 
government. Since 1888 the County Council of London, ruling six million 
people, has been one of the most interesting governing bodies in the world. 
Advanced students will find a striking account of its workings in an article 
in the January Contemporary Review for 1895, by Sidney Webb, a Radical 
member of the Council at that time. 

2 The Lords twice sent back the bill to the Commons, the second time with 
numerous amendments. Gladstone's last speech in Parliament was in defense 
of the bill against the attempts of the Lords to weaken it ; but, as he was 
about to resign on account of his health, the ministry accepted some relatively 
unimportant measures from the Lords, rather than appeal to the country. 



558 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 541 

III. LEGISLATION FOR SOCIAL REFORM, TO 1884.1 

541. Reference Table of Administrations. 

Liberals. ^^f.^*^^'- 

vatives. 

1830-34 . Grey 

1834-35 Peel 

1835-41 . Melbourne 

1841-46 Peel 

1846-52 . Russell 

1852 Derby 

1852-58 .I^J^fr'T 
( (2) Palmerston 

1858-59 Derby 

1859-66 .5^J>,^^^"7°" 
I (2) Russell 

1866-68 Derby 



Liberals. ^"f.^^^' 

vatives. 

1868-74 . Gladstone 

1874-80 Disraeli 

(Beaconsfield) 

1880-85 . Gladstone 

1885-86 Salisbury 

1886 . . Gladstone 

1886-92 Salisbury 

1892-95 . \ ^11 ^'""^f ^^^ 
l (2) Rosebery 

1895-1906 . . .' i^llTu'''''^ 
{ (2) Balfour 

1906 . . Campbell-Bannerman 



542. Social Reform by the Grey Ministry, 1 832-1 834. — The 

thirties were a period of humani^^arian agitation in English 
society. Charles Dickens wrote his moving stories of the 
abuses in the courts, the schools, the factories, the shops. Car- 
lyle thundered denunciation against injustice, in Chartism and 
in Past and Present; Mrs. Browning pleaded for the abused 
children in touching poems (§ 543). Public men, like Wilber- 
force, Eomilly, and Shaftesbury, had long been urging reform 
upon Parliament. The old Parliament had been indifferent ; 
the new Parliament felt a new responsibility to public opinion, 
and the reformers secured a ready hearing. 

After carrying the Eeform Bill of 1832, Earl Grey dissolved 
Parliament, and the new Parliament contained a large ma- 
jority for the Liberals. (Indeed, for the next thirty-five years, 
down to the Second Reform Bill, the Liberals were in power 
two-thirds of the time). Earl Grey's ministry remained in 
office for three years more, — years packed with social reforms. 
It freed the negro slaves in the West India colonies, paying 
the colonists for their loss.^ It began to free the hardly less 

1 In 1884, reform at home was interrupted by the Irish Question (§ 548). 

2 Special report: Wilberforce, and his work for emancipation. 



§543] LABOR LEGISLATION. 559 

miserable " white slaves " of tlie English factory towns, by a 
new era of factory legislation (§ 543). It freed the English 
small farmer and the honest rural laborer from the worst 
abuses of the poor-law system, which had been tempting them 
to improvidence and crushing them if they tried to remain 
independent.^ And it freed the Irish peasants in some measure 
from the obligation of paying tithes to support the Episcopa- 
lian clergy, whom they hated. Moreover, it swept away some 
more excesses of the absurd and bloody criminal code (§ 529), 
abolishing the pillory and the whipping post, and purifying 
the prisons. It made a first step toward public education, by 
a national grant of £100,000 a year to schools. And it began 
the reform of city government (§ 539), by an act scarcely less 
important than the parliamentary reform itself.^ 

543. Excursus : Factory Reform and Labor Legislation through 
the Century. — The most important legislation of the century 
was the labor and factory legislation. The new factory system 
(§ 528) had proved fatally cruel to women and children, who 
for a long time made up the greater portion of the employees. 
Parish authorities had the power to take children from pauper 
families, in order to apprentice them to employers ; and desti- 
tute or dissolute parents sold their offspring into such service 
by written contracts. In the early years of the century, gangs 
of helpless little ones from six and seven years upward, 

1 The English poor-law had been for over half a century in the " pig-stye " 
era. Relief was given recklessly, and in such a way as to put a premium on 
improvidence and a tax on self-respect. The laborers were coming to regard 
public alms as a right at all times; they were being educated into depending 
upon charity instead of upon themselves. Employers expected the laborers 
to receive alms, and they paid lo.wer wages in consequence, so that the work- 
men who did not apply for aid were at an unfair disadvantage. The nation 
was becoming utterly demoralized. In 1815 one person out of seven in all 
England received relief from tlie parish authorities, and in some parishes the 
paupers outnumbered the independent citizens. In 18.30 England paid in poor 
rates almost as much as she did in 1900, when population had tripled. The 
legislation of 1834 did not make things ideal, but it cut the cost in half and 
helped to save the nation from being educated into pauperism. 

2 The best brief treatment of this period of reform is in McCarthy's Epoch 
of Reform, chs. vii-ix. 



560 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 543 

secured in this way, were auctioned off, thousands at a time, to 
great factories, where their life was a ghastly slavery. They 
received no wages; they were clothed in rags; their food was 
insufficient and of the coarsest kind, and often they had to eat 
standing at their work, while the machinery was in motion. 
They were driven to work from twelve to sixteen hours a day, 
often by inhuman torture ; they had no holidays ; and the few 
hours for sleep were spent in filthy beds, from which some 
other relay of little workers had just been roused. Schooling 
or recreation there was none ; and the poor little waifs — girls 
as well as boys — grew up, if they lived at all, amid shocking 
and brutal immorality. When one batch of such labor had 
been used up, another was always ready, at practically no cost ; 
and the employers showed a disregard for even the mere 
physical well-being of their "white slaves," such as no negro- 
driver could ever afford toward his costly black chattels. 

In 1800, a terrible epidemic among children in certain fac- 
tory districts aroused attention ; and in 1802, a law " reduced " 
the hours of labor for child-apprentices to twelve a day. Then 
the apprentice system was soon given up, and its place was 
taken by the labor of children who were supposed to live under 
their parents' care, — to whom, therefore, the law did not 
apply. In 1819 and 1831, mild attempts were made to shorten 
the hours of labor for these children also to twelve hours a 
day; but the laws were not enforced, and, even on paper, they 
applied to only a part of the factory system. Thus the old 
conditions in the factory continued with little change. 

Lord Ashley (Earl of Shaftesbury), whose championship helped finally 
to remedy such evils, spoke with great emotion forty years later (1873) of 
how he used to stand at the factory gates and watch the children come 
out, — "sad, dejected, cadaverous creatures," among whom " the crippled 
and distorted forms might be counted by hundreds " ; and the poet 
Southey in 1833 declared of the factory system that the "slave trade 
is mercy compared with it." Indeed, the piteous story defies language, 
but it found its best expression in a passionate protest from the great 
heart of England's chief woman poet against this hideous phase of Eng- 
lish civilization (Mrs. Browning's Cry of the Children'): — 



§543J LABOR LEGISLATION. 561 

" ' For oil,' say the children, ' we are weary, 

And we can not run or leap. 
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 

To drop down in them and sleep. . . ,' 
They look up, with pale and sunken faces, 
, And their look is dread to see, 

For they 'mind you of their angels in high places, 

With eyes turned on Deity. 
' How long,' they say, ' how long, O cruel nation. 
Will you stand to move the world on a child's heart — 
Stifle down with a nailed heel its palpitation. 
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart 1 
Our blood splashes upward, gold heaper, 

And your purple shows your path. 
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper 

Than the strong man in his wrath.' " 

These evils were the first fruits of a new economic theory 
which dominated English thought at the time, — the " let- 
alone-theory " {laissez faire theory). Briefly stated, this doc- 
trine held that "demand" and "supply" should be left to 
regulate themselves in all economic matters, and that the best 
results would be obtained for all concerned by " free competi- 
tion." Any interference by legislation, it was urged, would 
work only harm, and labor, like any other commodity, should 
be bought in the cheapest market. 

This doctrine became known as " the Manchester doctrine," 
because it was held so universally by the English manufac- 
turers. It had much excuse in the fact that the paternal and 
protective legislation in past centuries had usually worked 
harm; but it was also reenforced by the selfish interests 
of this capitalist class. The same doctrine and the same 
men who were to help free England from the Corn Laws 
(§ 544) strove to ward off interference with these terrible 
factory conditions.* 

1 England, of course, was no worse than other countries, except that the 
factory system was more rapidly developed there. Even in America, accord- 
ing to Professor Ely (Labor Movement in America, 49), New England mills 
in 1830 worked employees from twelve to fifteen hours a day, the year round, 



562 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 543 

Gradually, liowever, Englishmen awakened to the ugly fact 
that the factory system was ruining, not only the souls, but 
also the bodies of hundreds of thousands of women and chil- 
dren, so as to threaten national degeneracy. In 1833, among 
the first acts of the " Reformed Parliament," Lord Ashley 
secured a factory law limiting the work of children (under 
thirteen years) to forty-eight hours a week, and that of "young 
people " (from thirteen to eighteen years) to sixty-nine hours a 
week (or twelve hours on five days and nine hours on Saturdays). 
Some provision was made also for educating children and for 
a few holidays, and the employment of children under nine 
was strictly forbidden. 

The bill was fought bitterly by most of the manufacturers, who urged 
(1) that it would oblige them to reduce wages and raise prices, (2) that it 
took from the workingman his "freedom of contract," or right to sell his 
labor as he chose, and (3) that it would cost England her industrial 
leadership in competition among nations. But public opinion had at last 
been aroused, and the bill became law. Fortunately, it provided for 
salaried "factory inspectors"; and these officers, after many prosecu- 
tions, compelled the employers to obey it. 

In 1847 a still greater factory law limited the labor of women 
and young persons to ten hours a day, with only half-time for 
children and with provision for schooling in the vacant half of 
the day. Indirectly, this law fixed a limit upon the hours of men 
also, because, after the women and children had all left a fac- 
tory, it was not profitable to keep the machinery going. Thus 
ten hours became the factory working-day. 

with a large proportion of child-labor. One mill at Griswold, Connecticut, ran 
fifteen hours, ten minutes. In many places, women and children were driven 
at the work by the rawhide; and in Patterson, New Jersey, women and chil- 
dren were required to be at work by 4.30 a.m. See also McMaster, History 
of the People of the United States, III, 112-n.5, and V, 121, 122. In Illinois, 
in 1895, when after sharjj agitation a law had been passed forbidding the 
employment of women in factories over ten hours a day, the supreme court 
of that state declared it unconstitutional, on the ground that it interfered 
with the personal liberty of the women to contract their labor as they pleased 
To the England of 1895 this seemed shocking enough. 



§544J REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 563 

This legislation of 1833 and 1847 applied only to factories 
for weaving goods. But in 1840, a parliamentary commission 
made public the horrible condition of women and children in 
the coal mines, — stunted, crippled, misshapen wretches, liv- 
ing in brutal indecency ; ^ and a law at once forbade under- 
ground labor by women and children. Then the principles of 
factory legislation were soon extended to almost all other lines 
of manufactures. Of the long series of later acts, the most 
important is Asquith's Factory Act of 1895, which, along with 
other wholesome provisions, prohibits the employment of any 
child under eleven years of age.^ 

These acts have been accompanied by many provisions to 
secure good lighting and ventilation in factories and work- 
shops, and to prevent accidents from machinery, by compelling 
the employer to fence it in with every possible care. In 1880 
an Employers' Liability Act made it easy for a workman to 
secure compensation for any injury for which he was not him- 
self to blame ; and in 1897 a still more generous Workman's 
Compensation Act secured such compensation for the workmen 
by a simple process without lawsiiits.^ 

544. Repeal of the Corn Laws and Adoption of Free Trade. — 
Lord Grey retired in 1834, but, except for a few weeks' interval, 
his party remained in power, under Lord Melbourne, until 1841. 
The Melbourne ministry contented itself, for the most part, 
with pointing to the record of its past, but it did introduce 

1 Children began work underground at five or six years of age, and rarely 
saw daylight. Girls and women worked almost naked among the men. The 
working hours were from twelve to fourteen a day; and in the wet under- 
ground passages, two or three feet high, women were compelled to crawl 
hack and forth on hands and knees, hauling great carts of coal by chains 
fastened to their waists. 

2 For an excellent summary of recent legislation along these lines, see Chey- 
ney's Industrial and Social History, 258-260. 

3 For Further Reading: Gibbin's Industrial History of England, 175-17G, 
and Cheyney's Industrial and Social History, 224-262. Vivid statements are 
given also in Justin McCarthy's Epoch of Reform, History of Our Own 
Times, and England in the Nineteenth Century, and in Lecky's History of 
England, VI, 219-225. 



564 



ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 644 




First Adhesive 
Penny Postage 
Stamp. The de- 
sign was used 
without change 
for thirty years, 
from 1840 to 1870. 



penny postage ^ in 1840, and it also began the modern liberal 
policy toward the colonies by a new Government Act for 
Canada in 1839 (§ 561). 

Then the Conservative ministry of Peel (1841-1846) was 
marked by the abolition of the Corn Laws. These laws put an 
excessively high tariff on imported grain. 
The aim, of course, was to encourage the rais- 
ing of food-stuffs in England, so as to make 
sure of a home supply ; and during the great 
wars this policy perhaps had been justifiable. 
Tlie money profits, however, had always gone 
mainly to the landlords, who enacted the laws 
in Parliament and who raised rents enough 
to confiscate the benefits which the high 
prices might have brought to the farmer. 
After the rapid growth in population had made 
it impossible for England to produce enough 
food anyway, the landlords' practical monop- 
oly of breadstuffs had become an intolerable 
burden upon the starving multitudes. 

The needless increase of misery among this class finally 
aroused a great moral indignation. In 1838 the Anti-Corn- 
Law League was organized by Richard Cohclen and John Bright, 
and for years it carried on a wonderful campaign of education 
through the press and by means of great public meetings. 
The manufacturing capitalists were made to see that the Corn 
Laws taxed them, indirectly,^ for the benefit of the landlords ; 
and so the selfish interests of this influential manufacturing 
class were thrown to the side of reform. Finally, in 1846, a 
huge calamity was added to the same side of the scales. This 

1 Previous to this, the charge on letters had been very high, sometimes 
several shillings, and had been collected in cash by the carriers. When the 
change was suggested, the postal authorities protested earnestly, declaring 
that under the proposed plan the carriers would never be able to handle the 
letters, or that it would cost ruinous sums to do so. 

2 To enable their workmen to live, they had to pay higher wages than 
would otherwise have been necessary. 



§544] 



REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS. 



565 



was tfhe Irisli Famine. The population of Ireland had been 
increasing rapidly, until it amounted to over eight millions. 
The greater part were poor peasants, living in misery, with 
the potato for almost their sole food. Suddenly, in 1846, in a 
night, came a blight that 
ruined the crop for the 
year ; and, despite gener- 
ous gifts of food from all 
the world, two millions of 
people died before even 
the old conditions could 
be restored.-^ The govern- 
ment in England had al- 
ready been considering a 
reform of the Corn Laws, 
and this terrible event in 
Ireland forced it to act. 
As John Bright after- 
ward said, " Famine it- 
self, against whom we 
fought, took up arms in 
our behalf." Peel decided 
to sweep away the tax 
and to let food in free; 
and, despite some bitter 
opposition from his own party, the reform was adopted. 

Peel was at once overthrown by a revolt among his old fol- 
lowers; but the Liberals took up the work and carried it 
farther. They abolished one protective tariff after another, 
until, by 1852, England had become a " free trade " country, 
as she has ever since remained. 

This policy was never afterward seriously questioned in England 
(whose manufactures and commerce have prospered so marvelously under 
it) until 1903. For some years preceding this date, to be sure, some of 

1 A million more emigrated to America in the next four years (1847-1850). 
This was the first large immigration of Catholic Irish to this country. 




Sir Robert Peel. 



566 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 545 

the Conservative party talked of a policy of " fair trade," or a system of 
retaliatory tariffs against countries whose tariffs shut out British manu- 
factures; and finally, in 1903, Joseph Chamberlain, a member of the cabi- 
net, declared that the time had come for England to adopt a policy of 
that kind and at the same time to secure closer trade relations with her 
colonies. 1 The tumult that followed, in and out of Parliament, indicates 
that ' ' protection ' ' may again become an issue in English politics. 

545. Minor Reforms, 1846-1870. — Lord Russell's ministry of 1846- 
1852, which carried the free-trade policy to completion, adopted also 
further sweeping factory reforms (§ 543), extended the state grants to 
schools, abolished the press gang,^ gave property rights to married 
women, and extended the generous policy already adopted for Canada to 
the Australian colonies (§ 561). The fourteen years from 1852 to 1866 
were largely a period of inaction or of foreign interests. The Crimean 
War (§ 430), the Danish troubles (§ 466), and the Civil War in America, 
with the consequent distress of the English manufacturing districts, ab- 
sorbed public attention ; but even in this period the window tax and an 
old stamp tax on newspapers ("taxes on light and intelligence") were 
abolished, and the system of taxation was reformed in the interest of 
justice to the small householders, who until this time had paid almost as 
high taxes on petty shops as great dukes paid on princely castles. 

546. The Gladstone Administration of 1868-1874. — Then, 
after the enfranchisement of the artisan class (by tlie Reform 
Bill of 1867), came Gladstone's great reform administration 
(1868-1874), which rivals in importance tha.t of Earl Grey itself. 
In 1870, it established alongside the old private and parochial 
schools a new system of public schools, or, as the English call 
them, Board Schools.^ It abolished purchase of office in the 
army, and completed the civil service reform (§ 537). It 

1 Special report: the cabinet crisis and the elections that followed. 

2 To kidnap poor men by force, carry them on board a war vessel, and 
compel them to act as sailors, had been for many generations a recognized 
method of keeping up the British navy ; and the importance of the navy was 
so great that even enlightened Englisli opinion had offered little protest, until 
the middle of the century. The impressment of American sailors, in the 
years preceding the war of 1812, was, of course, connected with this practice. 

3 So called because they are managed by elected boards. The term "public 
school " in England had been appropriated bj^ the great secondary schools, 
like Rugby and Eton, though there is, of course, no public control over them. 



§547] I DISRAELI'S FOREIGN POLICY, 1874-1880. 567 

introduced the ballot (§ 537). It opened English universities 
to others than the members of the Church of England. It 
passed further factory laws ; it definitely repealed the old con- 
spiracy laws, under which labor-unions had been persecuted ; 
and it gave legal rights to such unions, permitting them to 
incorporate and secure the rights at law of an individual. It 
also arranged honorably the Alabama Arbitration Treaty with 
the United States ; and, finally, it " disendowed " and " dis- 
established " the English Church in Ireland,^ and carried 
through important land reforms for Ireland (§ 552). 

But Gladstone would not go far enough to satisfy the Irish ; 
and, despite the trade-union law, he offended the labor party 
by a law regarding strikes.^ The ministry lost more and 
more of its support, and finally Grladstone '^ dissolved." In 
the election, the labor-unions voted for the Conservatives ; 
and that party secured a large majority, for the first time 
since 1832.^ 

547. Disraeli's Dazzling Foreign Policy Administration, 1874- 
1880. — Gladstone's ministry had been exceedingly peaceful 
and honorable in dealing with foreign nations. Disraeli, leader 
of the new ministry, characterized this attitude as weak, and 
said that it had "compromised the honor" of England. He 
adopted an aggressive foreign policy, and tried to excite 

1 After this time, the Episcopal Church in Ireland was separated from polit- 
ical power, and was upon an equal footing legally with any other church. 
The " disendowment" was only partial. The church lost all income from 
taxes (tithes), and much of its property was taken from it to create funds for 
the Catholics and Presbyterians in the island ; hut it kept its buildings and 
enough other property to leave it still very rich. All this, which to one party 
seemed only a partial remedying of a huge ancient injustice toward a whole 
people, seemed to another party an unpardonable injustice; and many good 
churchmen never forgave Gladstone for this "act of robbery." 

2 This law recognized the right of a union to strike, but made criminal any 
show of intimidation. It forbade strikers to revile those who remained at 
work ; and it is reported that under the law seven women were sent to prison 
for crying " Bah! " at a workman who had deserted the strikers. 

3 All the preceding conservative ministries, except Peel's in 1841-1846, had 
been mere makeshifts without a steady majority, or at best they had bad a 
bare -.yorking majority. 



568 



ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 548 



English patriotism by "jingo"* utterances and conduct. By 
act of Parliament, Queen Victoria ^ was declared " Empress of 
India"; the Boers of the Transvaal were forced into war; and 
in 1878, when Russia conquered Turkey (§ 577) and seemed 
about to exclude the Turks from Europe, Disraeli interfered. 
He got together a Congress of the Powers at Berlin, and 
preserved to Turkey a considerable part of her European em- 
pire, so as to shut Eussia 
of£ from the Mediterranean. 
In home affairs, the only 
reform was to repeal the law 
of 1871 regarding strikes. 

548. Gladstone and Ireland. 
— Gladstone had carried on 
a great campaign against the 
policy of supporting the 
Turk in his mastery over 
the Christian populations of 
Southeastern Europe, and 
in the election of 1880 the 
Liberals secured an over- 
whelming majority. G-lad- 
stone's new ministry passed 
the Third Reform Bill and 
it also completed the puri- 
fication of English politics, by adopting the law against 
" Corrupt Practices " (§ 537) ; but it soon found itself occupied 
with Irish questions, about which English politics were to 
revolve for the next fifteen years. Some explanation of Irish 
affairs must precede further survey of English matters. 




Gladstone. 



1 For this use of " jingo," see McCarthy's Our Own Times, II, 382, 383. 

2 Victoria ascended the throne as a young girl in 1837, and ruled until 1901. 
She never took an active part in politics, but her influence for pure morals 
and her natural kindliness and good sense helped on a reform of English 
society in a marked degree. Few sovereigns have ever experienced a more 
devoted loyalty. 



§549] THE IRISH QUESTION. 669 

For Further Reading on Divisions II and III. — Details on par- 
ticular topics, as on the repeal of the Corn Laws, can be found in 
McCarthy's Epoch of Reform (for the years 1830 to 1850), History of 
Our Own Times (1837-1880), and in the younger McCarthy's England 
under Gladstone ; and briefer accounts are given in McCarthy's England 
in the Nineteenth Century and in Rose's Bise of Democracy. The most 
comprehensive general treatment is in Walpole's England since 1815. 
The various histories of England previously referred to are good. Refer- 
ences for labor and factory legislation have been given on page 563. 



IV. THE IRISH QUESTION. 

In the histoi'y of Ireland . . . we may trace with singiilar clearness the 
perverting and degrading influences of great legislative injustices. — 
Lecky. 

549. Ireland to 1700. — Like so many other European countries, Eng- 
land has a race question. The English people proper are Saxon-Norman 
mixed with Celtic blood : the Welsh, Highland Scots, and Irish are pure 
Celts. In the larger of the British Isles, the English, Welsh, and Scots 
live at peace ; but for centuries the Irish of the smaller island have been 
restless under British rule. 

Ireland has been an unfortunate and misgoverned land. In the seventh 
and eighth centuries, she had begun to show brilliant promise (§ 178, 
note) ; but this early civilization vanished in the wars of the Danish 
invasions, which, for three hundred years, inflicted upon Ireland all the 
woes suffered by England for the generation before Alfred the Great. 

Thus Henry II of England found the island sunk in misery and bar- 
barism and torn by incessant tribal strife. Unhappily for both English 
and Irish, Henry's conquest was left incomplete; and war, anarchy, and 
misgovernment filled three centuries more, down to the time of Henry VIII, 
so that Sir John Davis, a poet-historian and statesman of Elizabeth's 
time, wrote, "If it had been practised in Hell as it has been in Ireland, 
it had long since destroyed the very kingdom of Beelzebub." Henry VIII 
and Elizabeth completed the subjugation of the island ; but now the Eng- 
lish and Irish civilizations had grown far apart, and the two people could 
not easily mingle. Moreover, the English had become Protestant, and the 
difference in religion added a tremendous difficulty. There was real dan- 
ger that Catholic Ireland might join Spain against Protestant England ; 
and so the mutual hate and fear between Irish and English grew more 
and more intense. About 1600, the government began to try to make 
Ireland English by crushing out the native language and customs and 



570 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 550 

religion, and by reducing the native population to mere tillers of the soil 
for their conquerors. On trumped-up charges, with every imaginable form 
of force and fraud, the lands of even the loyal Irish gentry were confis- 
cated to furnish estates for English adventurers ; and a war of extermina- 
tion was waged against all who remained in arms. 

Under Charles I, the "pacification " of the island was apparently com- 
pleted by Wentworth (§ 243) ; but just before the Civil "War in England, 
the goaded Irish rose in fierce rebellion and massacre. A little later the 
merciless hand of Cromwell restored order with a cruelty which makes 
his name a by-word in Ireland to-day. Toward the close of the century, 
the Irish sided with James II against William III (§ 250), but were 
defeated at the Battle of the Boyne (1690). The Treaty of Limerick 
(1691), however, promised them the enjoyment of their own religion and 
certain other privileges ; but these promises were treacherously broken 
by the English settlers, who controlled the Parliament of the island, i 

550. Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. — For tlie next een- 
ttiry the fate of Ireland was wretched beyond description. 
Six-sevenths of the land belonged to English landlords, most 
of whom lived in England and spent their rents there. Those 
who stayed in Ireland made up the ruling class of the island. 
Six-sevenths of the people were Catholic Irish.^ A few of 
these, especially in the west, were country gentlemen, but they 
lived under vexing legal restraints ; ^ a considerable number 
more were tenant farmers ; but the great bulk were a starving 
peasantry, working the land for Saxon landlords and living in 
mud hovels, — each with an acre or two of ground about it. 
Farmers and laborers alike were " tenants at will." That is, 
they could be evicted at the landlord's word.^ The landlord, 
therefore, could raise the rent at his own will ; and if the 
tenant improved the buildings or drained the land, he com- 
monly found at once that he had to pay more rent, so that he 

1 So that Limerick is known as " the City of the Broken Treaty." 

2 This was not true in Ulster, the northern province of the island ; hut 
there the population was mainly English. 

3 Special report. (If accessible, consult Leeky's England in the Eighteenth 
Century.) 

^ Population was so crowded that there was always sharp competition to 
get farms and cottages, and so the landlord could make his own terms. 



§552] IRISH HISTORY SINCE 1830. 571 

himself got no profit from his extra labor. Naturally, this 
system of "rack rent" made the peasantry reckless, improvi- 
dent, and lazy. At the same time, the fact that the law of their 
masters was used only to trick and oppress them, trained them 
to hate and break the law. 

551. The " Union " with England, i8oo. — In 1798 a rebellion 
took place; but the expected aid from the French Directory 
did not come in time, and the rising was put down with hor- 
rible cruelty. A change in the government followed. For 
several centuries, there had been a separate Parliament for 
Ireland. This Dublin legislature had been controlled wholly 
by the English settlers, and, except for a brief time, it had 
been strictly subordinate to the government at London. Shortly 
before the rebellion, it is true, in 1783, the " Irish Parliament " 
had possessed extensive powers ; but after 1798 England con- 
solidated the government of the t'vj^o islands. The Act of Union 
(1800) abolished the Irish legislature, and gave Ireland one 
hundred representatives in the English Parliament. Ireland 
became subject directly to English rule and English officials. 

These were the conditions at the opening of the nineteenth 
century. In 1803 a brilliant young Irishman, Robert Emmet, 
tried to organize a rebellion for Irish independence ; but the 
effort failed miserably, and Emmet died on the scaffold. 
There was no further movement in Irish politics until 1830. 

552. Irish History since 1830 has two main features: (1) an 
almost constant effort to repeal the Union of 1800, in favor of 
greater self-government; and (2) an effort to secure better con- 
ditions for the peasantry. The first movement has been mixed 
up with rebellions for complete independence ; and the second 
has been complicated by innumerable crimes of the peasantry 
against the persons and the property of the landlords. 

The struggle for the repeal of the Union began in 1830, in 
the first Parliament in which Catholics were allowed to sit.^ 
Forty of the Irish delegation were pledged to work for repeal, 

1 After the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 (§ 529). 



572 ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [§ 552 

and they were led by the dauntless and powerful Daniel O'Con- 
nell. This was the first '' Home-Rule " movement. In 1837 
it had assumed formidable proportions ; but the Irish famine 
of 1846 checked the agitation, and just afterward O'Connell 
died. Then a band of hot-headed young men tried conspiracy, 
and the fruitless and rather farcical rebellion of Young Ireland 
marked the year 1848. 

The next twenty years saw no progress. In 1866 came 
another rebellion, — the Fenian Conspiracy, organized by Irish 
officers who had served in the American Civil War. The dan- 
ger did not become serious, but it seems to have convinced the 
more liberal Englishmen that something must be done for 
Ireland, and Gladstone's reform ministry of 1868-1874 took 
up the task. 

Then there opened a new period in Irish history. The 
Episcopalian church in Ireland (§ 546) was disestablished, 
and this act was followed in 1870 by the first of a long series 
of important reforms of the land laws. Two things were 
attempted : (1) in case of eviction, it was ordered that the 
landlord must pay for any improvements the tenant had 
made ; and (2) the government arranged to loan money on 
long time to the tenants, so that they might buy their little 
patches of land. Neither of these measures was very effective 
at first ; but in 1881 and 1885 Gladstone's ministries extended 
and improved them until the peasants began to be true land- 
owners. It is hoped that under the new conditions they will 
develop new habits of thrift and industry. 

Meantime, in 1870, a group of Irish members of Parliament 
had begun a new agitation for *' Home Rule," and soon after- 
ward the same leaders organized the " Land League," to try 
to fix rents, as labor unions sometimes try to fix wages. For 
the time, the liberal ministries frowned on both these move- 
ments, and sternly prosecuted the Land League on the ground 
that it encouraged crime against landlords. At the same time, 
indeed, that the government was passing beneficent land laws, 
it was also passing " Coercion Acts " to establish martial law 



§552] IRISH HISTORY SINCE 1830. 573 

ill Ireland in order to repress disorder. The Coercion Acts 
were resisted by the Irish members with a violence never 
before seen in an English Parliament, and Irish conspirators 
outside made various attempts to wreck the English government 
buildings with dynamite and to assassinate English officials. 

But suddenly Gladstone made a change of front. In the 
new Parliament of 1884, eighty-six of Ireland's hundred and 
five members were " Home Rulers." They were determined to 
block all legislation ; and Gladstone could go on only by secur- 
ing their alliance. Moreover, he had become convinced that 
the only way to govern Ireland was to govern it in cooperation 
with the Irish, not in opposition to them. So in 1886 he 
adopted the " Home-Hule " plan and introduced a bill to 
restore a separate legislature to Ireland. The Conservatives 
declared that this policy meant disunion and ruin to the 
Empire, and in this belief they were joined by many of the 
old Liberals (led by Joseph Chamberlain), who took the name 
of Liberal Unionists. The Home Rule Bill was defeated ; but 
it made the issue in the next election a few years later, and in 
1893 Gladstone tried to carry another such measure. This 
time, the Commons passed the bill, but the Lords threw it out.-' 
Then Gladstone's age compelled him to retire from parliamen- 
tary life, and his party, left without a fit leader, soon went out 
of power. 

The Conservatives and Unionists are apparently fixed in 
their determination not to grant Ireland a separate Parliament ; 
but since 1895, they have made liberal concessions in all other 
respects. In particular, they have carried the provision for 
government loans to the peasantry farther even than the 
Liberals did,^ though formerly they had railed at such acts as 
robbery and socialism ; and they have granted a kind of local 



1 The bill differed in important particulars from the one before considered 
(cf. § 532, note). Moreover, the majority for it in Parliament was narrow and 
plainly due only to the Irish vote. 

2 The Land Bill of 1903 is the most comprehensive measure of this kind 
ever passed, and it seems to give perfect satisfaction to the Irish. 



574 ENGLAND IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. [§ 553 

"home rule," by establishing elective County Councils like 
those in England. To some extent these measures seem to 
have cut the ground from under the feet of the "Home Rulers." 
A large part of the Irish representatives in Parliament strive 
to keep up the agitation, but the English Liberals have lost 
enthusiasm in the matter and the Irish peasantry themselves 
care less about it as their material condition improves. Mean- 
time, English political energies, which for twenty years (1880- 
1900) went almost wholly to Irish matters, may now turn, 
again to reform in England itself. 

V. ENGLISH POLITICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 

553. Problems left over from the Nineteenth Century : Church 
and State ; Church and Education ; the Lords. — For Western 
Europe the nineteenth century was an age of democratic re- 
form in politics. The great need of the twentieth century is 
democratic reform in industrial and economic matters, so as 
to improve further the condition of the workers. But even in 
progressive European countries this supreme question (§ 554) 
is partially obscured by other unfinished business left over 
from the nineteenth century, — especially by the struggle to 
separate church and state and to free education from church con- 
trol. Though a Protestant country, England has an estab- 
lished church and is hampered by both these questions ; and 
in the political conflict they have become involved with a third 
question, — how "to mend or end'' the House of Lords. 

The last months of Gladstone's public life saw a sharp con- 
flict between the two houses of Parliament over the Irish 
question (§ 552 and note) and the Parish Councils Bill (§ 540 
and note 2) ; and, had the "grand old man" been able to keep 
up the fight in person, some remodeling of the Upper House 
would soon have become a practical issue. Before his retire- 
ment, in 1894, Gladstone also declared himself in favor of 
disestablishing the English Church in Wales, where nine- 
tenths of the population belong to other sects. The Liberal 
party, indeed, had been committed to this policy in its plat- 



§ 554] POLITICS IN THE T\YENTIETH CENTURY. 575 

form for some years, and, in 1895, just before it went out of 
power, it carried through the Commons a resolution for dises- 
tablishment in Wales. ^ 

The victory of the Conservatives in the elections of 1895 
and 1902 postponed both questions ; and, when the Liberals 
returned to power (1906), they found themselves confronted 
first with a more pressing but related question, the problem 
of church and school. During the long lease of power by the 
Conservatives, that party had placed the Board Schools (§ 546 
and note 3) iinder the control of the English Church. These 
schools are still mainly the schools of the laboring classes, 
who for the most part are dissenters ; and the injustice of this 
educational policy aroused intense indignation. When the 
Liberals came back to power in 1906, the first important meas- 
ure passed by the Commons was a radical "Education Bill" 
removing church control from the Board Schools." The Lords 
ruined the Bill by " amendments " such that one of the minis- 
try in the House of Commons likened the process to amending 
the Ten Commandments by striking out in each the not. 
Thus the contest stands at this juncture (January, 1907). 
The Lords insist that the Commons should dissolve, inasmuch 
as this particular Bill has not been before the country (cf. 
§ 532 a, and note). The Liberals call this an inexcusable de- 
mand for costly delay, since the principle of the Bill was an 
issue in the elections; and they insist that the Lords must 
give way. Otherwise some reconstruction of that body is 
threatened. The Liberals have chosen their ground well, 
and they have a heartier support from the voters in 
England itself (" the predominate partner ") than earlier 
ministries had in the conflicts over Irish or Welsh questions. 

554. Non-partisan Progress. — Toward 1890 the Conservative 
party began to show itself as zealous for the welfare of the 
laboring man as ever the Liberals had been ; and whichever 

1 Cf. the disestablishment in Ireland (§ 546 and note). 

■-2 The church has still its own schools, and these are even aided largely 
from the public treasury. 



576 ENGLAND IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. [§ 555 

party is in power, rapid progress is now to be expected in 
labor legislation. 

The most notable advance in recent years lias been in the 
matter of the peasantry. In 1890 twelve hundred men out 
of thirty-two millions of people owned over a fourth of all 
the land in England; while twenty-four twenty-fifths of the 
families in the island, including almost all farm-laborers, had 
no land at all. But a long series of Allotment Acts (1883, 
1887, 1892, 1894) has tried to remedy this state of affairs. 
Since 1894 the democratic "Parish Councils" have authority 
to buy land, or even to condemn it and take it at a forced sale, 
and then to turn it over in small holdings to the peasantry, 
either on long leases or for purchase on easy terms. This 
policy ought in time to restore the peasantry to the land. 

In the cities, the artisan class has certain well-defined 
demands, such as an eight-hour working day, old-age pensions, 
state insurance, better sanitary regulation of tenement houses, 
and tax reforms in favor of the poor man ; ^ and some atten- 
tion must soon be given to these questions. 

555. English Socialism : the Independent Labor Party. — There 
are various groups of Socialists in England, under different 
names, and in 1903 there was organized an Independeyit Labor 
Party. Despite the apparent willingness of both Liberals and 
Conservatives to yield to the demands of labor, this new party 
pledges its members to abstain from connection with any other 
political party. So far it has been especially hostile to the old 
Liberals, because it expects by their overthrow to become one of 
the two leading parties. Its program is distinctly socialistic. 
Up to the present time, its representatives in Parliament have 
been very few, but they have been able and excellent men. 



1 The aboHtion of tariffs on coffee and sugar and other food-stuffs which 
the poor man uses almost as freely as the rich man does, is one thing demanded. 
These taxes are spoken of as the "breakfast table duties." It is proposed 
also to tax large incomes at a much higher rate than small ones; and Eng- 
land already has a " progressive " tax of this kind on inheritances, — the rate 
increasing with the value of the estate. 



§ 558] GREATER ENGLAND. 577 

VI. COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES. 

After many years of wandering I have come to the conclusion that the 
mightiest factor in the civilization of the world is the imperial policy of 
England. — Admiral George Dewey (1899). 

556. Excellence of the English Colonial System. — Of all peo- 
ples the English are the most successful in colonizing new 
lands and in ruling semi-laarbarous races. The British Em- 
pire covers eleven million square miles, or over three times 
the area of the United States, and its population numbers four 
hundred millions, or about one-fourth of the whole human 
race. Forty millions of this number dwell in the British 
Islands, and about ten million more of English descent live 
in self-governing colonies, — mainly in Canada and Australia. 
The other seven-eighths of the vast population of the Empire 
are of non-European blood, and for the most part they are 
subject peoples. 

557. Colonies classified as to Importance. — The outlying pos- 
sessions are of two kinds : (1) those of continental importance 
in themselves, such as Canada, India, Egypt, Australia, South 
Africa, and the West Indian and South American colonies; 
and (2) coaling stations and naval posts commanding the 
routes to these possessions, such as Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, 
Ceylon, St. Helena, Trinidad, and scores more. 

558. Political Classes. — Some of these colonies are com- 
pletely self-governing, with no dependence upon England 
except in form. This is true of Canada and Australia, and, 
not quite so completely, of Cape Colony. These colonies are 
said to have " responsible governments.'" The English ministry 
appoints a Governor General, a nominal executive, whose 
powers resemble those of the figure-head monarch in England ; 
hut the people of the colony elect the local legislature, and the real 
executive is the local ministry, " responsible " to the legislature, as 
the ministry in England is to Parliament. 

In another group of colonies, the governors and officials sent 
out from England really control the whole government. This 



578 ENGLAND IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. [§ 595 

class of "crown colonies" comprise most of the naval posts, 
like Gibraltar, and also those colonies lying in the torrid zone, 
where the population, of course, is mainly non-European. 

Between the "responsible governments" and the " crown colonies " 
there is a third class of colonies with representative legislatures, but with- 
out responsible ministries. Some colonies of this class have as large a 
degree of self-government as Massachusetts or Virginia did in 1700, while 
in others the colonial legislature is only partly representative and is 
allowed very little power. Thus the colonies of this group merge by 
imperceptible degrees into those of the other two groups. 

Only a few of the foreign dependencies can be studied in detail ; but 
India, Egypt, and the three responsible governments are worthy of particu- 
lar attention. 

559. India is a huge crown colony. Until 1857 it remained under the 
control of the East India Company,^ but in that year came the Sepoy 
mutiny,^ — a rising of part of the native soldiers, — and when order had 
been restored, India was annexed to the British crown. The English 
ministry appoints a Viceroy and a Council, and these authorities name 
the subordinate officials for the subdivisions of the vast country. In the 
smaller districts, the English officials are assisted by native officers, and 
to some extent, by elected councils of natives.^ 

The English are making a notable attempt to introduce self-government 
and to get the natives to care for it. Towns are invited to elect municipal 
councils and to take charge of their streets and drainage and other matters 
-of local welfare ; but the Hindoo seems practically unable to take any 
interest in self-government. He wants these things done for him. 

The officers of the old East India Company were sometimes rapacious 
robbers, oppressing the natives to fill their own and the Company's cof- 
fers ; but since India became a crown colony, English rule, for the most 
part, has been wise, firm, and just, and has aimed unselfishly at the good 
of the natives.* The petty, constant wars, which formerly were always 
wasting the land, have been wholly done away with, and the terrible 
famines, which from time immemorial have desolated it at intervals, have 
become fewer, and on the whole, less serious. As a result, population 

1 Supervised more or less by Parliament. ^ Special report. 

3 Outside the territory ruled directly by England there are also nearly a 
thousand native principalities, large and small, where the governments are 
really directed by resident English " agents." 

* India pays no taxes into the English treasury; indeed, she is a drain on 
that treasury, but her trade is a chief source of British wealth. 



§ 560] GREATER ENGLAND. 579 

has increased rapidly, — over fifty per cent in a century, — and to-day 
nearly three hundred million people dwell in India.^ Except as to num- 
bers, however, and except that the people have been forced to stop burn- 
ing widows alive, the condition of India is little better than before, and 
there seems to be no attachment among the natives for English rule. The 
Hindoos cannot understand western civilization, and they do not like it. 
Whether England can leaven this vast mass and lift it to a higher life is 
one of the great problems of the future. 

560. Egypt in name is one of the tributary states of Turkey. In fact, 
however, it had been independent for the greater part of tlie nineteenth 
century, imtil, in 1881, a new master stepped in. The government had 
borrowed recklessly and spent wastefuUy, and the land was misgoverned 
and oppressed by crushing taxation. Then, in 1879, England and France 
jointly intervened to secure payment of debts due from the Egyptian 
government to English and French capitalists. In 1881 came a native 
Egyptian rising against the government and the foreigners. France with- 
drew. England stayed, ^ restored order, and " occupied " the country. 

Since that time, Egypt has really been an English protectorate. The 
Khedive and all the machinery of the old government remain unchanged ; 
but an English agent is always present at the court "to offer advice," 
and the Khedive understands that this advice must be followed. Many 
Englishmen have entered the service of the Egyptian government, too, 
and all such officers look^to the English agent as their real head. 

When England put down anarchy in 1881, the ministry declared that 
the occupancy would be only temporary. This statement of Gladstone's 
ministry was made in good faith, and was in keeping with other parts of 
Gladstone's modest foreign policy. None the less, it is certain now that 
no English government will willingly give up Egypt. The possession of 
that country, together with the mastery of the Suez Canal, insures the 
route to India ; and Egypt has been made a base of operation, also, from 
which English rule has been extended far toward Central Africa. 

To Egypt, English rule has been an unmixed good. The system of 
taxation has been reformed, so that it is less burdensome and more pro- 
ductive. The irrigation works have been revived and improved, so that 
Egypt is a richer land than ever before. The population is increasing 
rapidly and the peasantry are vastly better off than a generation ago. 



1 Read Kipling's William the Cojiqveror. 

2 England had a special motive for stayiag. The Suez Canal was opened 
in 1869. In 1876 the English government bought from the Egyptian govern- 
ment its share of the Canal stock, and the English intervention in Egypt was 
largely to protect this property. 



580 ENGLAND IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. [§ 561 

561. Development of "Responsible" Colonial Governments. — 

One of the most important features of the nineteenth century- 
progress was the development of self-government in the Anglo- 
Saxon colonies of England. No doubt the loss of the Ameri- 
can colonies had taught a serioiis lesson, and the next colony 
to show violent dissatisfaction had all its wishes granted. 

This event took place in Canada in 1837. The two prov- 
inces of Upper and Lower Canada had been governed for many- 
years much as Massachusetts or Virginia were governed before 
1776. There had been a growing dissatisfaction because the 
legislatures did not have a more complete control over the 
finances and over the executive ; and the accession of the girl- 
queen in England in 1837 was the signal for a rising. The 
rebellion was stamped out quickly ; but an English commis- 
sioner, sent over to investigate, recommended that the de- 
mands of the conquered rebels should be granted. Parliament 
adopted this recommendation. In 1839 the two provinces 
were united and were granted " responsible" ministries. Eng- 
land, in name, retains a veto upon Canadian legislation ; but 
it has never been used. In 1850, a like .plan for self-govern- 
ment was granted to the Australian colonies, and, in 1872, to 
Cape Colony. 

562. Federation of Groups of Colonies. — In 1867 another great 
advance was made by the organization of the Dominion of 
Canada. This is a federal state, similar to the United States, 
composed now of eight members. The union has a two-house 
legislature, with a responsible ministry ; and each of the eight 
states has its own local legislature and ministry. A similar 
union of the various Australian colonies into one federal state 
was agitated for many years, and, after two federal conven- 
tions and a popular vote, it was finally established on the first 
day of the twentieth century. 

Thus two new English nations were formed, — each large 
enough to command respect among the nations of the world 
(each nearly double the size of the United States when its in- 
dependence was achieved). A similar federation will no doubt 



§ 563] GREATER ENGLAND. 581 

sometime unite the English, and Dutch colonies in South 
Africa. 

563. South Africa is not an altogether satisfactory part of the Empire 
for Englishmen to contemplate. England seized Cape Colony from the 
Dutch during the Napoleonic wars, and it was one of the few parts of 
Holland's possessions which were not restored at the peace. English 
settlers came in rapidly, but in 1834 a portion of the old Dutch colonists 
"trekked" (moved with families, ox-wagons, herds, and flocks) north 
into the wilderness, and set up an independent government in Natal. A 
few years later the British annexed Natal, and the Dutch again trekked 
into what is known as the Orange Free State, and, in 1848, once more 
into the country beyond the Vaal river. These "Transvaal" settlers 
became involved in serious difficulties with the native blacks, and a 
native rising threatened to exterminate Europeans in South Africa. 
England interposed, put down the Zulus, and extended her authority 
once more over the Boer states. 

In 1880, the Boers rebelled, and, with their magnificent marksmanship, 
destroyed a British force at the battle of Majuba Hill. Gladstone adopted 
the view that the Boers had been wrongfully deprived of their independ- 
ence, and, without attempting to avenge Majuba Hill, he magnanimously 
withdrew the British claims and left to the Boers of the Transvaal a 
virtual independence, under British "protection." The exact relations 
between the two countries, however, were not well defined, and much 
ground was left for future disputes. 

Soon afterward, gold was discovered in the Transvaal, and English 
and other foreigners rushed in, so as to outnumber the Boer citizens. 
The Boers, who were simple farmers, unable themselves to develop the 
country, had at first invited immigrants, but soon became jealous of 
their growing numbers and refused them all political rights. England 
attempted to secure better treatment for her citizens among these new 
settlers, and was bent upon reasserting her authority in general. The 
Boers saw that England had determined to force them to a policy which 
would put the government of the little land into the hands of these foreign 
immigrants (" Outlanders "), and they declared war (1899). The Orange 
Free State joined the Transvaal, and the little republics carried on a mar- 
velous and heroic struggle. They were finally beaten, of course ; and 
England adopted a generous policy toward the conquered, making large 
gifts of money to restock their ruined farms, and granting liberal self- 
government, without any discrimination against her recent foes. The 
Boers accepted the situation in good faith ; and South Africa, it is to be 
hoped, has seen its last race quarrel between European peoples. 



582 ENGLAND IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. [§ 564 

564. Imperial Federation. — The Boer War showed that there 
was a strong tie between England and her self-governing colo- 
nies; for Australia, jSTew Zealand, and Canada all made liberal 
gifts of troops and money to assist the mother country. The 
tie which holds together the Anglo-Saxon parts of the Empire 
is, however, almost wholly one of sentiment. Certainly, if 
either Canada or Australia wished to set up as an independent 
nation, England would not dream of trying fco hold it. At 
present the colonists in these lands have no cause to complain, 
except in one respect : namely, they have no voice in deciding 
the policy of the Empire toward foreign nations, and therefore 
they may possibly become involved in serious wars without 
their own consent. Probably this evil is largely or wholly off- 
set by the fact that the English navy affords protection to the 
Canadian and Australian trade, so that these great and wealthy 
countries are practically freed from all burden of military and 
naval defense. Still, the situation is not altogether satisfactory. 
A Canadian may properly wish a voice in the policy of the 
Empire ; that is, he may wish to be a citizen in as full a degree 
as if he lived in England : and England may properly think 
that Canada ought to contribute something to imperial defense. 
It has been proposed to meet both these wants by some form 
of Imperial Federation. This means that the different parts of 
the Empire would be left their present parliaments for local 
matters, but that the management of matters that concern the 
Empire as a whole would be turned over to a new parliament 
made up of representatives in fit proportion from England and 
her colonies. As Canada and Australia grow lai-ger and wealth- 
ier, it is probable that some such plan will be tried or that the 
bonds between the different parts of the Empire will grow 
weaker and weaker. If such a federation can be carried out 
successfully, it will be the greatest triumph ever yet achieved 
by federal government and a new boon to civilization, equal 
perhaps to any political device yet developed by the great 
English-speaking race. 



i 



CHAPTER VII. 

SLAV EUROPE. 
I. RUSSIA. 

565. Russia a Factor in "Western Politics since 1800. — The 

growth of Russia upon the edge of Western Europe has created 
new problems in European politics. The appearance of this 
vast, aggressive, semi-Oriental state as a factor in western 
politics dates, of course, from Peter the Great (about 1700). 
During the next century, Russia tore away half of Sweden's 
power, annihilated Poland, and began to absorb Turkey ; but, 
except for some part in the wars of Frederick the Great, she 
did not greatly affect the countries that we think of as " west- 
ern," until the ISTapoleonic wars. Her destruction of Napo- 
leon's Grand Army revolutionized Europe and revealed her 
tremendous power. Since that time, it has always been neces- 
sary for western statesmen to keep in mind her military force 
and her political sympathies. 

The important phases of Russian development in the nine- 
teenth century may be classed under the following heads : (1) 
growth in territory and power ; (2) persistence of absolutism ; 
(3) emancipation of the serfs ; (4) introduction of the germs of 
representative institutions in local government ; (5) the rise and 
fall of the Nihilists ; (6) the turning away of the mass of the 
upper classes from western civilization toward a native Slavic 
culture ; and (7) the consequent tendency to Russianize the 
western provinces of the empire, where German or Latin cul- 
ture had had some part. These movements, of course, became 
interlaced, and were greatly affected by the characters of the 
different tsars (§ 574), and they are now all overshadowed by 
the twentieth century movement for constitutional government 

(§ 575). 

583 



584 SLAV EUROPE. [§566 

566. Area and Population. — Including her Asiatic territory, 
Kussia covers over eight and a half million square miles (be- 
tween two and three times the area of the United States), or 
about one-seventh the area of the habitable earth. She has a 
population of one hundred and thirty millions,^ of which all 
but aboiit twenty millions live in European Eussia. The popu- 
lation is made up of some seventy different nationalities, but 
the great central core, comprising over two-thirds the whole, is 
composed of Russian Slavs. The subject races form only a 
fringe about the center, and are rapidly being Russianized 
(§ 574). The largest of the subject nationalities are the Poles 
(nearly ten millions) and the Finns (something over two and 
a half millions). There are also about four million Jews^ dis- 
persed throughout the larger cities of the empire, especially at 
the seaports, and nearly twelve million Tartars ; but both these 
peoples are widely scattered and have never formed govern- 
ments of their own as the Piuns and Poles each have done. 

567. Territorial Expansion. — In the fifteenth century, when 
the Russians threw off the Tartar yoke (§ 170), they held only a 
part of what is now South Central Russia, nowhere touching a 
navigable sea. Territorial expansion has come about through 
two distinct agencies, — colonization and war. 

a. Until the time of Peter the Great, the chief advance was 
made by a ceaseless movement of real settlers into the savage 
wilderness, especially to the north and northeast. Like swarm- 
ing hires, the Russian villages along the frontier sent out bands 
of people, each band to advance a little way and form a new 



1 This population is just about equal to the whole group of English- 
speaking peoples in the United States and the British Empire. 

2 In 1815 nearly one-half all the Jews in the world were in Kussia. During 
the Middle Ages they had been persecuted in Christian lands in Europe and 
had fled to Turkey, settling in provinces about the Black Sea which after- 
ward passed under Russian control. In the last century and in recent years 
(1903) they have been subjected to persecuting laws and to massacres, much 
as they were in England and France six hundred years ago. As a result, 
great numbers of them have been coming to the United States. This treat- 
ment of the Jews in Russia is a good subject for a special report, 



§ 567] RUSSIA SINCE 1800. 585 

village, driving out or absorbing the Tartar barbarians. On 
the south and southeast, and to some extent in Siberia, the 
advance was made by another kind of frontiersmen, called 
Cossacks. The Cossacks lived partly by agriculture, partly by 
grazing. At times they were almost independent of the central 
government, with a military organization of their own. They 
were admirably fitted to extend Russian authority over new 
lands at the expense of weaker peoples, and often they waged 
war on their own account against Turks and Tartars, somewhat 
as our early American frontiersmen won Kentucky from the In- 
dians and Texas from Mexico. Indeed, as early as the time of 
Ivan the Terrible (§ 170) a Cossack horde seized part of Siberia. 
b. Besides this advance, due to the unauthorized action of 
the people themselves, the tsars have added great stretches of 
territory by war. The most important of such additions come 
under five heads : — 

(1) The Baltic Provinces from Sweden, by Peter the Great, 

about 1700 (§ 269). 

(2) Poland, by Catherine II, 1772-1793 (§§ 269, 278). 

(3) Finland from Sweden, in 1743 and 1807 (§§ 269, 365). 

(4) The provinces alone the Black Sea from Azof to the 

Danube, in a century of war against the Turks, — from 
1772 to 1878. 

(5) In Asia : (a) the occupation of Siberia at the expense of 

savage Tartar tribes (completed to the Pacific in the 
seventeenth century), and of Kamchatka in 1707 ; 
(b) a district of Asia Minor from the Caucasus to the 
Caspian, and the Trans-Caspian region — between the 
Caspian Sea and Persia — at the expense of Moham- 
medan principalities and of Turkey ; and (c) recently, 
northwestern China, until checked by Japan. 

Naturally Russia has sought outlets to the sea. She reached the frozen 
ocean of the north early. Peter the Great reached the Baltic. In war, 
however, the narrow outlets from that sea are easily closed by a hostile 
power, and hence Russia has been suspected of looking covetously towards 
the Atlantic ports of Sweden and Norway (§ 525, close). Peter began 



586 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 567 

a struggle also for the Black Sea, and Catherine II won those waters ; 
but Constantinople closes the exit from them to the outer world. Russian 
ambition therefore has aimed, for over half a century, at that ancient 
city, the former capital of the Greek faith ; but it has been the settled 
policy of England to oppose Russian advance in this direction. 

In Asia, until recently, Russian advance has been steady and terrify- 
ing. In that continent Russia aimed at the Pacific ports on the east, and 
at the Persian Gulf and the Indian seas on the south (besides the rich 
realms of central Asia and India). Shortly after the middle of the nine- 
teenth century she came into conflict with China on the extreme north- 
west (5 c, above). In 1858 she advanced to the Amur (seizing northern 
Manchuria). Two years later she secured Vladivostock, and so obtained 
a Pacific port ice-free for most of the year. In 1895 the great Trans- 
Siberian Railway was begun, and in 1902 the vast undertaking was com- 
pleted to Vladivostock. 1 Meanwhile Russia had .compelled China to cede 
the magnificent harbor of Port Arthur (§ 591) and the right to extend the 
Trans-Siberian Railroad through Chinese Manchuria to that port (1898). 

On the south (5 6, above), more resistance had been encountered, but 
Russian advance had never turned back. Just after the opening of the 
nineteenth century, Russia secured the passes of the Caucasus. By 
the middle of the century she had advanced into Turkestan. From that 
lofty vantage ground she contested with England the diplomatic control 
of Persia, and planned a further advance toward India. In swift succes- 
sion, heedless of England's tlireats, she secured Bokhara (1868), Khiva 
(187;^), and Merv (1881, despite explicit pledges to England three years 
before) .2 In 1893 she reached the "roof of the world," the great Pamir 
plateau, and soon extended her military railroad to within seventy-five 
miles of Herat, the "key to India." It was believed that Great Britain 
would resist further advance by war ; but the clash in Central Asia has 
now been postponed by Japan's victory in the extreme east (below)- 

In the last years of the nineteenth century, Russia was busied with 
vast internal improvements, — not only the great railroads mentioned 
above, from Moscow to the Pacific and to the frontiers of India, but also 
a stupendous system of canals to connect her internal waterways. She 



1 This road is more than 5000 miles long, — nearly double the length of the 
great American transcoutinental roads. Eventually it must prove one of 
the great steps in the advance of civilization ; and it has been fitly compared 
in importance to the finding of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope or 
the building of the Suez or Panama canals. 

2 These Trans-Caspian districts are in the main rich and fertile, with valu- 
able mines, and with a teeming, industrious population. 



§ 568] RUSSIA SINCE 1800. 587 

is sLill in a primitive stage industrially, and these useful projects have 
been carried on largely by foreign workmen and foreign capital. Under 
such conditions at home, Russia had every reason to desire peace abroad ; 
but in 190-4 the arrogant folly of her military classes plunged her into a 
war with Japan as unjust as it proved ruinous. 

The story of this struggle is told briefly in another place. Here a few 
words will sufiSce. In 1900, during the Boxer disorders in China (§ 591), 
Russia seized Chinese Manchuria ; and, though she promised solemnly 
that the occupation should be temporary only, it soon became plain that 
she was determined to remain there. To Japan, this near approach of an 
all-devouring, hostile power seemed to threaten not only her prosperity 
but also her independence, and in 1904 she resorted to war. To the 
amazement of the world, Russia's huge power collapsed utterly on land 
and sea. She was thrust back from Port Arthur and Manchuria ; and, 
apparently, her aggressive expansion has ceased for a long time to come. 

568. The Government to the year 1907 has been an absolute 
despotism. The will of the tsar is limited only by the neces- 
sity of using a multitude of agents to manage his vast realm. 
The leading body of advisers and helpers about the tsar are 
four, all dependent upon his will : (1) a body of ministers at 
the heads of various departments of government, with complex 
hierarchies of officials below them ; (2) a Council of State, 
which advises the tsar in the matter of new laws and which 
puts into definite form those he decides to issue ; (3) the 
Senate, which has now become little more than a court of ap- 
peals ; and (4) the Holy Synod, which oversees religious mat- 
ters. (For the Duma, see § 575.) 

The police agents of the central government have tremen- 
dous power and use it tyrannically. The government, of 
course, desires to be just, but it is often at the mercy of its 
agents. In the case of political offenses, the government itself 
is usually merciless: often it imprisons men for indefinite 
periods in secret dungeons, or sends them to exile in Siberia, 
all merely by decree, without judicial trial. 

Russia surpasses all other countries, ancient or modern, in 
centralization and absolutism. The government is not only 
supreme: it meddles with everything. Not a scholarship in a 
school can be founded, not a bed in a hospital can be estab 



588 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 569 

lished, without the solemn approval of the tsar. Until 1855, 
no village church or school could be built until the plan had 
been sent to St. Petersburg for approval. Under Nicholas I 
(1825-1855), even a private house with as many as five win- 
dows required a special royal permit.^ 

569. Emancipation of the Serfs, i86i. — The greatest event 
in Russian history between the reforms of Peter the Great and 
the present constitutional movement, is the emancipation of 
the serfs by Alexander II. The serfs numbered over forty- 
seven millions of people (nearly twelve times as many as the 
slaves who were freed in the United States at nearly the same 
time), and they comprised over four-fifths the population of 
European Eussia in that day. 

Not only were the peasants freed from the jurisdiction of 
the nobles and from obligation to serve them : they were also 
assigned land for themselves. They had always dwelt in little 
village-communities ; and now each village, or mir, was left to 
manage its own local matters ^ and was given land for its sup- 
port. The land, like the serf labor, was taken away from the 
noble, but it was not confiscated : each mir was to pay an an- 
nual rent (fixed by the tsar's commissioners) or to buy the 
land outright, as it chose. If the mir wished to buy, the tsar 
paid the noble landlord, and the mir undertook to repay the 
tsar in small installments spread over forty-nine years. Most 
mirs adopted the purchase plan and own their own land. 

570. The Peasantry : Misery ; Recent Agrarian Reforms ; 
Outlook Alexander and other Liberals hoped that marvelous 

1 Read Leroy-Beaulieu's Tsars and Russians, especially II, 60 and 112-116. 

2 This may seem to contradict what was said above about Russian central- 
ization, but both statements are true. Russia is a strange compound of 
autocracy and democracy, — autocracy at the top in the government of the 
tsar, reacliing down through all Russian society to the peasantry, and democ- 
racy at the bottom in these peasant villages. Indeed, the Slavophil Russian 
party, who believe in the destiny of their country as the future regenerator 
of Europe, have for their motto, "A free people under an omnipotent tsar." 
Advanced students may be called upon to report upon the mir, its govern- 
ment and its system of land cultivation. Cf. especially Wallace's Russia or 
Leroy-Beaulieu. 



§ 570] RUSSIA SINCE 1800. 589 

improvement would follow the emancipation; but such hopes 
have hardly been realized in the two generations that have 
elapsed. The great body of the peasantry remain constantly 
near the starving point. This unfortunate condition has been 
due in great measure to the fact that the peasantry did not get 
land enough for their support. The tsar intended each village 
to receive at least as much land as its inhabitants had culti- 
vated for their own support while they had been serfs ; but 
the nobles, who carried out the details of the arrangement, 
managed to cut down the amount, desiring, indeed, that the 
peasants should be forced to eke out their income by tilling 
the land of the larger proprietors about them. Moreover, 
Russia is a poor country and the taxes are excessive, so that 
much more than half the peasant's labor goes to the tax col- 
lector. To pay even then the peasant has been forced often 
to borrow money at extortionate interest, as high as ten per 
cent a month. Nearly one-third the entire peasant body, in- 
deed, have been so reduced that they have pledged their labor 
for one or more years in advance to neighboring landlords, and 
so have been forced back into a kind of tem.porary serfdom. 

In addition, the government, until 1907, held the mir respon- 
sible as a unit for the annual rent or annual installment of 
the purchase price of the land, and for other taxes, ^ In con- 
sequence, methods of cultivation are poor, and labor brings 
small retiirns. The artisan has not been allowed to leave his 
village to seek opportunity in the cities, except under hamper- 
ing restrictions ; and, as a rule, agriculture has been carried 
on carelessly and uneconomically, by a communal system. 
The mir assembly, each year or two, has redistributed its land 
in strips among its families, and the cultivation has been by 
the primitive three-field arrangement (§ 36). 

A recent attempt has been made to remedy these evil con- 
ditions. In October, 1906, after a year of terrible disorder and 
anarchy (§ 575) the tsar by edict declared the communal system 

iCf. the French taille before 1789 (§ 296). 



590 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 571 

no longer binding. Freedom of movement was promised ; some 
taxes were abolished, and vast amounts of state land were 
offered to the peasantry, to be paid for on low terms in fifty 
annual payments.' 

It is too early, as yet, to see how far these reforms may 
improve the material situation of the rural workers. The 
peasantry, up to the present time, are unaffected by western 
civilization, and live in a world wholly different from that of 
the small class of educated Russians. Nowhere else in the 
civilized world is the gap between the upper and lower classes 
so complete (§ 2G8). The peasants can hardly be said to be 
civilized. They are filthy, stolid, ignorant, and wretched, and 
they have been trained into habits of improvidence and law- 
lessness. Disease is prevalent and terribly fatal. The death 
rate is a half higher than in the countries of Western Europe, 
and higher in the country than in the cities. One-half of all 
children die before they reach the age of five, and every year 
large districts are desolated by famine, as in France before the 
Revolution (§ 290), while vast districts of fertile land lie 
uncultivated. 

On the other hand, the peasants have sometimes shown 
themselves capable of sublime self-sacrifice and of lofty re- 
ligious enthusiasm, and like the new Slavophil party among 
the nobles, the whole peasantry have a blind faith in future 
Slav supremacy (§ 571). 

571. The Higher Classes : Slavophil Sentiment. — Besides the 
peasants, the rural population comprises a numerous nobility 
and other landed proprietors. These elements, with the edu- 
cated professional and mercantile classes of the few cities, 
make up Russian "society," and their opinions are the only 
"public opinion" that can be referred to in this vast empire. 

For the last two hundred years (since Peter the Great), the 
upper classes have had a veneer of western civilization. At 

1 Enormous amounts of private lands, formerly owned by the nobles, passed 
into the hands of the peasants in the year of riot and auarchy, 1906; cf. § 575. 



§ 573] RUSSIA SINCE 1800. 591 

the opening of the nineteenth century, their conversation was 
carried on, not in Russian, but in French; and their books, 
customs, fashions, and ideas were imported from Paris. A 
little before the middle of the century, however, a reaction 
began in favor of native ideas and customs. This is the 
Slavophil movement, which for a while dominated Russian 
society and politics. 

Notwithstanding their recent humiliation, the Russians be- 
lieve zealously in themselves as the future leaders of civil- 
ization. They look forward to a Pan-Slavic Empire which 
shall include the Slav states of Bohemia and of Southeastern 
Europe, and which shall, both in power and in the character of 
its culture, surpass the western civilization which now sways 
the world. 

572. Local Government and the Germs of Representative Assem- 
blies. — Russia is divided into vice-royalties ; these in turn into 
provinces; these into districts. The districts are subdivided 
into volosts, and each volost is made up of several mirs. 
The tsar appoints governors and advisory councils for the 
higher divisions, and his agents and police officers now exer- 
cise very complete control in the volost and in the mir. The 
mir, however, has its primary assembly (§§ 569, 570) ; and the 
provinces, districts, and volosts have representative assem- 
blies. These assemblies (zemstvos) are gatherings of " es- 
tates" — representatives of the nobles, of other individual 
proprietors, and of the mirs. The functions of the zemstvos 
are very limited; they have some supervision over the expen- 
diture of local funds for roads and schools; but they cannot 
take up the consideration of any matter until it has been laid 
before them by the royal governor of the district or province, 
and that officer has an absolute veto upon all their resolutions. 
Indeed, their powers are hardly more than advisory, even upon 
matters laid before them. 

573. Russianizing the Favored Provinces. — The western prov- 
inces of Russia — Finland and the Baltic provinces — had 
drawn their civilization from Sweden and Germany ; indeed, 



592 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 573 

in the Baltic provinces, the upper classes are still mainly Ger- 
man in blood. In both regions until recently the leading re- 
ligion has been Lutheran. The Poles, too, have been marked 
off from the Russian Slavs mainly by the greater German in- 
fluence in their customs and by their adherence to the Catho- 
lic church. These three countries all excel Russia proper in 
civilization; and each at its acquisition was solemnly promised 
the perpetual enjoyment of its own language, religion, customs, 
and laws. 

Despite such pledges, the Slavophils determined to Russian- 
ize the provinces.^ Such a policy is a blessing to the bar- 
barous regions on the east, but it has been bitterly hard upon 
the more progressive western districts. Since 1881 the Ger- 
man language has been forbidden in schools and churches in 
the Baltic provinces ; in Poland a like policy had been begun 
as regards the Polish language, after the insurrection of 1863. 
Finland, however, was connected with Russia only through a 
" personal union " : the tsar was also grand duke of Finland, 
but the duchy had its own constitution, its own representative 
Diet, and its free institutions, all guaranteed in the most 
solemn manner by each grand duke at his accession. More- 
over, the Finns were industrious, peaceful, and prosperous, 
and gave no handle for interference. Still, the Slavophils 
finally got their way. In 1900 the process of making Finland 
a mere province of despotic and Slav Russia began, and, de- 

1 The desire is natural enough, if it can be honorably secured. At the 
bottom, it is the same sense of nationality which has helped to make Ger- 
many, Italy, and Belgium, and which leads the German Empire now to try to 
Germanize its Polish and Danish subjects, or which makes us desire to Ameri- 
canize the foreigners who come to live among us. The difference, however, 
between the American position, on the one hand, and that of Germany or 
Russia, on the other, is easily appreciated. 

The determination to Russianize all Russia is one element in the religious 
persecution in that country. .Just as it leads to attempts to convert all Mo- 
hammedans in the eastern districts, and as it is crushing out Catholicism in 
Poland and Lutheranism in the Baltic lands, so it inclines the government to 
look calmly at the persecutions inflicted upon the Jews and ujjon the heretic 
sects that have fallen away from the Russian (Greek) church. 



§ 574] RUSSIA SINCE 1800. 593 

spite the sympathies of the western world for Finland, it was 
carried on rapidly, until in 1902 the last vestiges of the 
ancient liberties of this little northern land had been swept 
away. The revolutionary disorders of 1905-1906 (§ 575), how- 
ever, afforded the Finns an opportunity which they were 
quick to seize. In the helplessness of the Eussian state, the 
tsar was forced to restore their ancient privileges. A Con- 
stituent Assembly, elected by manhood suffrage, adopted a 
new constitution for Finland, which received the tsar's ap- 
proval in September, 1906.^ The Poles, too, seem in a fair 
way to recover some of their former privileges. 

574. The Tsars. — The government, of course, has varied in 
character with the tsars. Alexander I (1801-1825) has been 
mentioned several times in connection with the period of 
Napoleon and Metternich. He had been educated by a liberal 
French tutor, and, in a weak and indecisive way, he favored a 
liberal policy in the management of Russia and Poland. His 
brother, Nicholas I (1825-1855), was wholly Prussian in feeling. 
This had not been true of any tsar before for over a century, 
and accordingly this reign marks the beginning of the Slavo- 
phil-movement. Nicholas despised western ideas and western 
civilization, and he believed in Russia with all his heart. He 
abandoned all his brother's attempted reforms and returned 
openly to the policy of despotic autocracy. 

In the last years of Nicholas' reign, however, the humilia- 
tion of the Crimean War (§ 429) seemed to reveal a weakness 
in the despotic bureaucratic system when pitted against west- 
ern civilization ; and Alexander II (1855-1881), the son of 
Nicholas, returned again to a liberal policy. He emancipated 
the serfs, against the almost unanimous opposition of the 
nobles, and he introduced the zemstvos, though the people 
cared so little for such institutions that many times the mirs 
and towns petitioned to be relieved from the burden of sending 

1 This constitution replaced the old clumsy assembly of four estates (cf. 
Sweden, 524) by a single-chambered legislature to be elected by universal 
suffrage, — women to vote as well as men. 



591 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 574 

representatives. Jury trial was introduced ; the press was 
left more unshackled ; the universities were allowed a freedom 
never before permitted; and attempts were made to secure just 
treatment for the Jews. 

But Alexander soon found himself threatened with a move- 
ment by liberal agitators altogether too radical for his taste. 
In the years 1860-1870 many educated Russians, especially 
the younger men and women, were carried away by vague but 
enthusiastic speculations regarding some regeneration of so- 
ciety, and in the years 1870-1878 the ardent disciples of these 
new theories began to spread socialistic doctrines among the 
peasantry. To Alexander this seemed full of danger ; and in 
1877-1878 the police put down the movement sternly, and 
indeed with barbarous cruelty. Then the Radicals fell back 
upon a policy of terrorism. They organized a secret society of 
NiJiilists, and, by assassination after assassination, tried to 
avenge the persecution of their friends and to terrify the tsar 
into granting a constitution and full representative government.-^ 

Alexander finally decided to grant part of these demands. 
He had prepared a draft of a constitution which was to set up 
a national Zemstvo, to be made up of deputies from the pro- 
vincial representative Assemblies. Unhappily, the day before 
the project was to be published, the ISTihilists succeeded in 
murdering the tsar with a dynamite bomb. 

Alexandeo' III (1881-1894) returned to the policy of his 
grandfather Nicholas, and the Slavophil party became domi- 
nant in society and at the court. Many of the liberal reforms 
of Alexander II were undone. In nearly half of European 
Russia the zerastvos were abolished. The press was again 
subjected to stern censorship. The teachers in the universities 
were muzzled, and the royal officers and police were given 
great authority to interfere in the self-government of the mirs. 
This policy, both as to despotism and to Slavophilism, was con- 



VThe demands of the Terrorists at a little later time are published by 
Stepniak in a note appended to his Underground Russia. 



§ 575] RUSSIA SINCE 1800 595 

tinned, by Nicholas II, who became tsar in 1894 ; and the police 
seemed to have stamped out the Nihilists, as well as all consti- 
tutional agitation, until the system of absolutism collapsed 
disgracefully in the war with Japan in 1904-1905 (§ 591). 

575. The Constitutional Movement of 1905-1906. — The Jap- 
anese War showed tiiat the bureaucratic despotism was dan- 
gerously inefficient and shamefully corrupt. The intelligent 
classes were exasperated by the humiliating defeat, and the 
peasantry were direfully oppressed by war taxes. These 
facts revived revolutionary movements, and gave them new 
importance. Early in 1905, European Russia was convulsed, 
as never before, by peasant uprisings, by industrial strikes, and 
by mutiny in army and navy. The educated classes spoke out 
forcefully for a constitutional government; and, for a time, the 
tsar and his advisers felt constrained to yield. In March a 
7'epreseiitative assembly was vaguely promised; and soon after 
the close of the war, in October, an imperial decree guaranteed 
complete /reectom of conscience and freedom of speech, private 
and public. 

Amid growing anarchy and ruin, the promised Duma was 
finally brought together, after many delays, in May, 1906, — 
the first Representative Assembly of the Russian nation. The 
tsar had arranged the elections so as to leave most weight in 
the hands of the wealthy classes, but the revolutionary move-, 
ment had sv/ept everything before it. A great majority of the 
members were liberals and called themselves Constitutional 
Democrats. Among them were many leaders of wise and 
moderate statesmanship, and the world was amazed at the 
show of political ability in this first, inexperienced Russian 
Assembly. 

By unanimous vote the Duma asked for four great political 
reforms, — universal suffrage, a "responsible" ministry, the 
abolition of martial law, and amnesty for all political offenders 
then in prison or in exile, — and for a long programme of social 
reform, including the turning over of state lands to the suf- 
fering peasantry. All these demands were refused. After 



596 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 575 

proper persistence, the Duma wisely withdrew all but the 
agrarian demand. Reactionary councils, however, were gain- 
ing ground with the tsar, and on July 21 he dissolved the 
Duma, aunouncing that the autocracy must itself care for 
the needed reforms. Accordingly, in October, 1906, an im- 
perial edict decreed the agrarian reforms mentioned in § 570, 
and also abolished the special privileges of the nobles, making 
all Russians equal before the law and equally eligible to pub- 
lic employment. Another Assembly was promised, also, for 
March, 1907 ; but plainly the government meant to control it. 
The dissolution has been followed by months of anarchy. 
The government fell back upon stern repression and intimida- 
tion, to suppress not only disorder, but also political agitation. 
The extreme revolutionists resorted to a campaign of sys- 
tematic political assassination. Meantime the unhappy land 
was again distracted by peasant risings and by strikes, which 
were put down brutally by Cossack "punitive expeditions" 
in which thousands of unoffending people perished; while a 
new famine desolated many provinces. In January, 1907, a 
population of thirty millions is said to be in terrible want of 
food. 

Fifty officials were assassinated in one week in August, just after tlie 
dissokition of the Duma, the victims ranging from ministers of state to 
petty police officers, and many others were wounded. During the follow- 
ing four months, according to the best figures obtainable, 1629 riots oc- 
curred and 244 bombs were thrown at officials. On tlie other hand, more 
than a thousand political offenders were executed, and fifty thousand were 
sent to Siberia or to prison, while the Revolutionists count up 24,239 
others slain by the soldiery in putting down or punishing riots. 

The extremists who engage in the desperate policy of assassinating 
government agents manifest a reckless disregard of their own lives, and 
expect death on the scaffold or by torture in prison. But the worst fea- 
ture of the whole terrible history is that the government has virtually 
proscribed the Constitutional Democratic party, to prevent its further 
political activity. In November, of the leaders of that party in the dis- 
solved Duma, one (a learned professor) had been murdered ; two had 
been cruelly beaten in prison, and another had been driven insane by 
treatment there ; ten were in hiding ; five had been exiled ; twenty-four 




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§ 576] THE BALKAN STATES. . 597 

were imprisoned ; and 182 others, including the president and the vice- 
president of tlie Duma, were under indictment for treason. Apparently 
the tottering despotism is endeavoring to wage war upon Russian intel- 
ligence. 

None the less, it seems impossible that Russia should settle 
back permanently into its former autocracy. The revolution, 
by bloody or peaceful means, must lead ere long to some form 
of constitutional government. Despite all this terrorism and 
the prosecution of nearly seven hundred editors in 1906, the 
Russian press teems (January, 1907) as never before, with 
outspoken demands for reform. The Duma of 1907 will be 
watched with intense interest by the civilized world. 

II. THE BALKAN STATES. 
A. General Survey to 1878. 

576. The Subject Races and the Turks in 1815. — In 1815 all 
Southeastern Europe beyond Austria-Hungary and Russia was 
part of Turkey. The Turk, however, was merely an invader, 
and had no part in European civilization ; and the history of 
Southeastern Europe began only as the native races regained 
their freedom.^ The Turks made a small part of the popu- 
lation, and the bulk of the people had kept their Christian 
(Greek) Faith. In the old Hellenic peninsula dwelt the Greeks. 
North of the Danube, in the provinces of Wallachia and Mol- 
davia, dwelt the Latin Roumanians, claiming descent from 
Trajan's colonists in Dacia.^ Between the Greek and Latin 
peoples lay two great Slav nations, — the Bulgarians in the 
east, from the Aegean to the Danube, and the Servians on the 
west. On the Adriatic were the Albanians, who had abandoned 
Christianity for Mohammedanism. 

The boundaries between these subject peoples were sadly 
mixed, and the line between them and their kinsmen in Austria 

1 Reread § 2. For the earlier history of the region, see § 169. 

2 Ancie7it History, § 474. 



598 • SLAV EUROPE. [§577 

and in southern Russia had been drawn merely by the accidents 
of war. A fourth of the Roumanian race were in the Russian 
province of Bessarabia, which had been seized from the Turks 
in 1812, and another fourth were in Transylvania, which the 
Hungarians had reconquered from Turkey in the eighteenth 
century. The Croats and Serbs in southern Hungary, too, 
were merely part of the old Servian race living in the lands 
Himgary had reconquered from Turkey ; while in the moun- 
tain fastnesses of Montenegro dwelt a few thousand Servians 
who had never yielded to the Turks. 

577. The Subject Races win Freedom, 1821-1878. — The Rou- 
manians, beyond the Danube, and the Servians, in their rugged 
country, had risen in various rebellions early in the nineteenth 
century ; but the first successful revolt of a subject people was 
the Greek rising of 1821-1828 (§ 399). European aid resulted 
in Greek independence ; and, in connection with the final settle- 
ment (1829), the two Roumanian provinces and Servia were 
granted a large measure of internal self-government : they were 
to have rulers chosen by themselves and confirmed by the 
Sultan ; they remained tributary, however, to the Turkish 
Empire. 

The next advance came in 1848. In that "year of revolu- 
tions," the Roumanians rose once more and appealed to Russia 
for aid. Russia and Turkey both took up arms, but a con- 
vention between the two Powers provided for the nominal 
restoration of Turkish authority, subject, however, to Russian 
supervision. These events soon afterward led the Tsar jSTich- 
olas to suggest to England that it was time to decide what 
was to be done with the possessions of the Turks as Turkish 
rule decayed. This was a formal statement of the " Eastern 
Question," as that question was long to be understood.^ 

Nicholas was disappointed at the cool reception given his 

1 " We have on our hands a sick man, a very sick man," said Nicholas to 
the English ambassador; "it would be a great misfortune if one of these 
days he should slip away before the proper arrangements have been made." 
This is the origin of the phrase, " the Sick Man of Europe." 



§ 577] THE BALKAN STATES. 599 

sviggestion for the partition of Turkey. England preferred 
to bolster up the Ottoman power as a barrier to Russian 
advance. Engla,nd and France and Russia had acted in con- 
cert twenty-five years before, in freeing the Greeks ; but in 
1854 the two western states fought Russia to prevent any 
further breaking up of Turkey (§ 429), and the Congress of 
Paris (1856) guaranteed the " integrity " of that state. 

In return, the Sultan promised reforms for his Christian 
subjects ; but the next twenty years saw no serious attempt to 
carry out the pledge, and in 1875-1876 the Serbs in Herzego- 
vina and the Bulgarians rose for independence. The Herze- 
govinian herdsmen in their distant mountains were able to 
carry on a kind of warfare for some time without extreme 
suffering ; but the Bulgarians in their easily accessible country 
felt the full force of Turkish vengeance. There followed the 
horrible events known as the " Bulgarian Atrocities." Turkish 
soldiers destroyed a hundred villages, with every form of tor- 
ture and cruelty, and massacred thirty thousand people, carry- 
ing off also thousands of Christian women into terrible slavery. 
The Servians then sprang to arms ; and in 1877 Alexander II 
of Russia, in sympathy with the unanimous demands of his 
people, declared war. The universal horror in Western Europe 
at the crimes of the Turks prevented for a time any interfer- 
ence with Russia, and in ten months her armies held the Turks 
at their mercy .^ The Peace of San Stefano arranged for the 
withdrawal of the Turk from Europe, except for the city of 
Constantinople itself, with a little adjacent territory, and for 
the Mohammedan district of Albania. Roumania, Servia, and 
Montenegro were to be wholly independent, and the two latter 
were enlarged in territory ; while Bulgaria, from the Danube 
to the Aegean, was to become a self-governing state, tributary 
in name to the Sultan. 

But now Europe interfered. The Congress of Berlin, at the 



1 The Turks fought with their ancient gallantry, and made a stouter resist- 
ance than had been thought possible. Special report : the defense of Plevna 



600 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 578 

suggestion of Disraeli (§ 547), cut down the size of Servia and 
Montenegro, to keep tlie southern districts under Turkish rule, 
and divided Bulgaria into three parts. The southern third 
(Macedonia) was left as a part of the Turkish empire; the 
middle third ("Eastern Eoumelia") was partly returned to 
the Sultan, who was, however, to rule it through a Christian 
governor responsible to the Powers ; and only the northern 
division (between the Balkans and the Danube) was left the 
practical independence Russia had won for it, with liberty to 
choose its own prince. 

This shameful surrender of the half-freed Christian popula- 
tions left ancient Thrace and the southern part of old Mace- 
donia still in Turkish hands, and postponed indefinitely the 
final settlement of the " Eastern Question." It has also made 
much more difficult the progress of the parts of the peninsula 
that have been freed, since they must give their energies to 
preparation for war with the Turks, in order to protect them- 
selves and to complete the emancipation of their southern 
brothers (cf. § 582 and note). 

During the past year (1903) there has been a state of anarchy in 
Macedonia. Insurrectionary committees, operating from Bulgaria, have 
fomented armed risings and the Turks have put them down with outrages 
scarcely less horrible than those of 1876. The jealousies between the 
Powers have prevented any intervention ; but Austria and Russia, the 
two Powers most concerned, have finally agreed upon a plan, which, if 
adopted, will virtually put these districts under their joint administration. 

B. The Separate States. 

578. Roumania. — After 1848 the districts of Wallachia and 
Moldavia clamored for union. The Congress of Paris (§ 429) 
took the two provinces under the protection of the Powers and 
permitted each of them to choose an assembly and a prince. 
The demand for union was not heeded; but in 1859 the 
two provinces chose the same prince, Alexander I, and three 
years later the two provincial Assemblies merged into one. 



§578] JUF. BALKAN STATES — ROUMANIA. 601 

The Powers objected, but they did not interfere by force, and 
the new state took the name of the Principality of Roumania, 
remaining, of course, tributary to Turkey. 

Up to this time, the political activity of the country had 
come wholly from the nobles, or country landlords : the great 
mass of the population had been serfs. In 1864, while Russia 
and the United States were carrying out their great acts of 
emancipation, Roumania took a like step. The serfs were 
freed and were given one-third the land of the country, — the 
state paying the nobles, the former landlords, and receiving 
repayment from the peasants in annual installments. In 1884 
it was enacted that the new peasant landowners should not 
sell or mortgage their lands until thirty years had elapsed, — 
a measure designed to protect the new and ignorant peasantry 
from the greed of money-lenders. 

In 1866 there occurred a political revolution, Alexander 
was forced to abdicate, and a National Assembly adopted a 
liberal constitution and elected Charles of Hohenzollern as 
Prince of Roumania. Prince Charles gave special attention 
to the army. When the Russo-Turkish war began, Roumania 
declared itself independent, and the new army proved a gallant 
and efficient force, rendering material aid to Russia in the 
struggle. In 1881 Roumania took the style of Kiyigdom of 
Roumania. Since that time, the nation has been peaceful, 
and has made steady progress in political and industrial 
development. Nine-tenths of the population are still illiterate, 
but this condition will soon begin to improve. All tax-paying 
adult males have the franchise. The legislature consists of 
two houses, chosen by electoral colleges. King Charles has 
maintained the attitude of a constitutional sovereign and has 
governed through " responsible " ministries. 

The country has a population of nearly six millions, and it 
is ardently desirous to annex the two and a half million fellow 
Roumanians who are subject to Hungary, just across the Car- 
pathian mountains (§ 499). Roumania and Hungary, however, 
are both sadly out of place, lying as they do between the great 



602 SLAV EUROPE. , [§ 579 

Slav Empire of the north and the new Slav kingdoms of the 
south; and Eoumania's greatest danger is, that she may be 
absorbed in some future movement to unite the separated Slav 
peoples. As long as she can maintain herself, she forms an 
important barrier to Russian advance. 

579. Montenegro. — After the overthrow of the ancient Servian em- 
pire by the Turks in 1389 (§ 169), some bands of Servians, who preferred 
exile to submission, retired into tlie fastnesses of Montenegro, or tlie Black 
Mountain. Here, for five hundred years, these " Swiss of the Balkans " 
maintained their independence. The story has been called one of 
"ferocious heroism." The incessant struggle trained the people into 
a semi-savage race with some traits of barbarous cruelty. Since 1878, 
however, the little state has begun to make some progress in civilization. 

The people number a little over two hundred thousand, and the coun- 
try is not much larger than a good-sized county. The prince is virtually 
absolute, though he is assisted by a council of eight members. One half 
of the council are elected by all who bear arms ; the other half the prince 
appoints. 

580. Servia is a land of warlike herdsmen, the ancient 
nobles having been destroyed in the Turkish wars. The 
people began the nineteenth century struggle for independence 
as early as 1804, under Kara George (Black George), a swine- 
herd and a national hero; but the self-government of 1829 
(§ 577) was finally secured under another leader, Milosh Obreno- 
vitcli, who became Prince of Servia. Members of the Kara 
George and the Milosh family followed each other in swift suc- 
cession on the princely throne, through revolution or assassi- 
nation, until 1859. From that time until 1903 the Milosh 
dynasty kept the crown. 

Servia became an independent kingdom in 1878 (§ 577). 
In 1863 and 1888 liberal democratic constitutions were intro- 
duced, modeled upon those of Western Europe, but so far the 
country has shown itself little fitted for constitutional govern- 
ment. King Milan, whose arbitrary temper had made him ex- 
cessively unpopular, abdicated in 1889 in favor of his son, the 
boy Alexander. Four years later, Alexander, still only seven- 
teen years of age, arrested the regents while they were dining 



§581] THE BALKAN STATES — SERVIA. 603 

at his table, and, by a simple decree, suspended the constitu- 
tion and modified it at will, against the desires of nine-tenths 
of the population and of the National Assembly. Then in 
1903 the civilized world was shocked by the murder of King 
Alexander, together with his Queen and a few friends, in the 
palace, by a midnight attack of some-army officers. Apparently, 
however, the nation approved the deed, and Peter Karageorge- 
vitcli was at once summoned to the throne. The whole story 
resembles the army revolutions that characterize Oriental 
states, and, along with all her recent history, it shows how far 
Servia is from having really adopted European civilization. 

The nation is distracted by vehement quarrels of political 
factions who differ from each other mainly in their pro-Kussian 
and pro-Austrian sympathies. The peasantry are well-to-do, 
but Servia contains almost no men of any considerable wealth. 
The people are ambitious of adding Slav territory on the south 
now held by Turkey ; but the Servian army in 1878, and again 
in 1888 in a conflict with Bulgaria, proved a poor fighting 
machine. 

In 1900, the population was about two and a half millions. 
The Servian peasant villages are groups of family-communities, 
each containing thirty or forty members, living in one group 
of buildings wath a common hall, and forming a self-governing 
unit. This Zadruga, or family-community, seems to be an 
ancient Slav institution. 

581. Bulgaria has never been reconciled to the way it was 
treated by the Congress of Berlin, though part of the wrong 
done it at that time was redressed a few years later. In 1885, 
Eastern Roumelia (southern Bulgaria) drove out its governor 
and called for union with self-governing Bulgaria. The people 
in the northern province were enthusiastic in their sympathy, 
and a Bulgarian army at once occupied Roumelia, to prevent 
the restoration of Turkish authority. The two provinces have 
not been actually incorporated into one state in form, but they 
have the same prince, and they enjoy similar institutions. 
Since this merging of the two provinces, the Bulgarians have 



604 SLAV EUROPE. [§ 581 

carried on an active agitation for a similar occupation of Mace- 
donia, and more tlian once Europe lias seemed on the verge of 
war in consequence.^ 

In 1885, when Bulgaria and Roumelia were joined, Servia 
declared war, — jealously opposed to this enlargement of a 
neighboring state. By quick and decisive victories, the Bulga- 
rians not only confirmed their hold upon Eoumelia, but estab- 
lished themselves as the leaders of the Southeastern Slavs. 

After the settlement of 1878, the Bulgarians adopted a con- 
stitution and chose for their ruler a German noble. Prince 
Alexander of Battenberg. The legislature {Sohranje) consists of 
one chamber, elected by manhood suffrage. It goes through 
the forms of western parliamentary government ; but in truth 
the peasantry, the mass of the nation, take no interest in poli- 
tics at ordinary times, and the government controls elections 
almost at will. 

The real political question is, whether Bulgaria shall have a 
policy of her own or whether she shall be a mere satellite of 
Russia. Prince Alexander proved honorably unwilling to sub- 
mit to Russian dictation, but in 1886 he was kidnapped and 
dethroned. The President of the Sobranje, Stambuloff, then 
became for a time the head of a national government, and con- 
tinued the independent Bulgarian policy, with the enthusiastic 
support of the mass of the nation. In 1887, Prince Ferdinand 
of Coburg was elected to the vacant throne, but until 1894 
Stambuloff continued to control the government. Stambuloff 
was a patriotic Bulgarian and a powerful statesman, a " Balkan 
Bismarck" ; but his harsh treatment of political enemies and his 
arrogance created many enemies and made him hateful to the 
court. In 1894, Prince Ferdinand succeeded in getting him 
out of office. To keep him out, however, was not easy ; but 
his political enemies seized the moment's advantage to plot 
against his life. Stambuloff took all possible precautions ; but 
in broad daylight, in a public street, with the police looking 

1 Especially in 1903. See § 577, close. 




.CRETE S.! B AiToEnOl^^ir^ 



§582] THE BALKAN STATES — BULGARIA. 605 

on, his carriage was stopped and he was hacked to pieces by a 
band of brutal assassins, whom the government made no effort 
to punish. The court was probably not a party to the crime, 
but it had exposed Stambuloff to the vengeance of private ene- 
mies, and his death was certainly grateful to the Prince. This 
dastardly action made it evident that Bulgaria, like Servia, 
is far from the standard of western civilization. Since the 
removal of Stambuloff, the government has made strenuous 
efforts to regain Eussian favor. 

The people are mostly a prosperous peasantry, living in rude 
comfort : indeed, Bulgaria is sometimes called the '' Peasant 
State." The Zadruga is found in parts of Bulgaria, as well as 
in Servia. The population is about three and three-quarter 
millions. 

583. Greece. — While Greece was winning its freedom in 
1828, a National Assembly elected as president Capodistrias, a 
Russian Greek. This provisional government, however, proved 
both tyrannical and ineffective. In 1830, at the suggestion of 
the Western Powers, the Assembly voted for a monarchic 
government and offered the crown to Leopold of Coburg. 
Leopold, afterward to win honorable fame as king of Belgium, 
declined the throne, because the territory of Greece had been 
so limited, in the settlement with Turkey, that he saw inevi- 
table trouble before the new state. In 1831, Capodistrias was 
assassinated; and the Assembly, with the approval of the 
Powers, placed a young Bavarian prince upon the throne as 
Otto L 

Otto surrounded himself with Germans, and soon became 
exceedingly unpopular. In 1843 a national rising forced him 
to grant a liberal constitution, and in 1862 a second revolution 
drove him from Greece. The next year, the Assembly elected 
a new king in the person of Prince George of Denmark, and in 
1864 the present constitution was adopted. The legislature 
consists of one chamber of deputies, chosen by manhood suf- 
frage ; and the ministers are " responsible." 

The enthusiastic hopes of the Philhellenes of 1821-1828 



603 GREECE SINCE 1828. [§ 582 

(§ 399) have not been realized. Greece has abounded in 
brigandage and crime, and the public order is still far from 
satisfactory. The population increased rapidly after 1830, 
but in 1900 it still amounted only to two and a half millions. 
Schools are better and more universal than in the other 
Balkan states, but over a third of the adults are still illiterate. 
The most serious problems since 1864 have been (1) territorial 
and (2) financial. 

a. Like the other Balkan states, Greece has been bitterly 
dissatisfied with its boundaries, and eager to bring under its 
government the several millions of Greeks still in bondage 
in Macedonia, in Constantinople, and in Crete. The boundary 
of 1828-1830 left even Thessaly and Epirus to Turkey. Most 
of these districts were added to Greece in 1881, as a result of 
the wars of 1877-1878.^ Then, in 1896, Crete rebelled against 
Turkey ; but the Powers interfered to prevent her union with 
Greece, and confusions and massacres followed for many 
months. The next spring, in spite of the opposition of the 
Powers, Greece declared war upon Turkey, with the intention 
of increasing her territory on the north. The Greeks hoped 
that the Bulgarians would rise at the same time and that the 
European Powers would then feel compelled to intervene. In 
fact, however, Bulgaria remained quiet, and the Powers left 
Greece to her fate. The German Emperor, indeed, had sent 
the Sultan German officers to organize and command the 
Turkish army, and that force showed a military excellence 
wholly unexpected. Greece was quickly defeated, and forced 
to pay a war indemnity, while Turkey took small strips of 
territory all along her northern frontier, so as to command all 
the passes into Greece in case of another struggle.^ 

1 Greece, at a staggering cost, had built up an army, and in 1877 she wished 
to join in the attack upon Turkey. The Western Powers forbade such action, 
promising Greece tliat she should get as much by peace as by war ; and, after 
some delay, the promises were partially kept. 

2 With Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece all asking for extension into Mace- 
donia, and each jealous of the others, the Eastern Question is still far from 
settled. 



§ 582] THE BviLKAN STATES — GREECE. 607 

6. Greece was "born in debt." By the settlement of 1830, 
she was obliged to pay Turkey a large sum in return for 
her independence. Her army expenditure plunged the little 
country deeper in debt ; and before the last war the interest 
on her foreign debt took half the revenue, while taxation had 
become crushing. In 1894 the government announced that it 
could pay only a third of the interest on the national debt. 
Talk of European intervention followed ; and after the Turk- 
ish war the Powers did assume joint control of the finances, to 
guarantee payment of the new debt to Turkey and of that to 
the old bondholders in Western Europe. Like Spain and Por- 
tugal, and, in some degree, like Italy, Greece seems sunk in 
hopeless bankruptcy, unless she will give up her military ex- 
penditures and turn zealously to the development of her 
internal resources. 

EoR Further Reading. — Of the general histories of modern times, 
Seignobos (587-637) gives the best treatment of the Balkan states, and 
as much, probably, as students can take time for. Tlae following special 
treatments are good : Beaman, Stamhuloff ; Dicey, The Peasant State 
(Bulgaria) ; Miller, The Balkans ; Minchin, Rise of Freedom in the Bal- 
kan Peninsula; Samuelson, Boumania; Sergeant, New Greece; Beck- 
ford-Smith, Greece under King George. Laveleye's Balkan Peninsula 
(1887) is an older work, but valuable. Freeman's Ottoman Power in 
Europe is a powerful indictment of Turkish rule down to 1878, and Free- 
man's Essaijs contain several valuable papers on Southeastern Europe. 
The Reviews, Year Books, and Annual Encyclopedias will be consulted, 
of course, by students particularly interested. 

Exercise. — Review of certain general topics for the Europe of to-day : 
(1) Education and illiteracy ; (2) the kulturkampf ; (3) the array sys- 
tem ; (4) financial conditions of the governments in the small states ; 
(5) the state of the franchise, with dates for progress toward democracy. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE NEW AGE. 

I. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, 1871-1900. 

583. Rearrangement of Political Relations after 1881 : the 
Triple and Dual Alliances. — The years 1866-1871 saw a new 
" Great Power " added to the small European circle. The 
emergence of Germany as a strong united nation, in place of 
the former petty jealous states of Central Europe, of itself 
would have compelled a recasting of political alliances; and 
about the same time other causes contributed to a like result. 

(1) France was bent upon revenge for the Franco-Prussian 
War, and she longed to recover her severed provinces. For 
twenty years after 1870 the Alsace-Lorraine matter was the 
burning question in European politics ; and, to strengthen her- 
self for the expected conflict, France cultivated cordial rela- 
tions with Russia. (2) Meantime, Bismarck offended Russia 
by supporting Austria's claims in the Balkans, where lay the 
other chief storm-center of Europe. (3) In 1880, Italy was 
angered by the French seizure of Tunis (§ 451), — the first 
important conflict of interest in recent times outside Europe. 

Thus, in curious fashion old enemies were drawn together 
and old associates divided. In 1881, Germany, Austria, and 
Italy leagued themselves in a union known as the Triple 
Alliance, and a few years later Russia and France formally 
adopted a dual alliance. The continent was thrown into two 
great hostile camps, jealously watching each other's slightest 
movement. 

584. Some Results of this Rearrangement. — Three results of 
this rearrangement particularly impress the observer, — the 

608 



§ 584] EUROPEAN ALLIANCES. 

'^ armed peace " of the generation since 1871, the loss ot im- 
portance by France in international matters, and the isolation 
of England. 

a. Each of the two alliances professed that its aim was to 
maintain peace ; and, in a sense, the maintenance of peace has 
been one of the results. A conflict between such enormous 
forces, under the new conditions of army organization, quick 
transportation, and destructive explosives, would be so fright- 
ful that the most reckless government must hesitate to enter 
upon it ; and, though Europe has repeatedly been on the verge 
of war, no great conflict has actually taken place there since 
the Franco-German struggle. Europe rests under a costly 
"armed peace," based upon fear. 

h. Russia proved to be the chief gainer from the Franco- 
Russian alliance. Russian loans were taken up freely by 
French capital, and so Russia secured the funds necessary for 
her vast internal improvements (§ 567). French support, 'too, 
made it easy for Russia to carry her point many times in the 
East against the policy of England. But France herself, in 
European matters, reaped little apparent benefit. She was in 
no danger of attack, and she was not able to make an attack 
herself. Critics described her position as that of the " tail to 
the Russian kite." Russian backing, however, did enable her 
to act firmly at times in African matters (§ 451). 

c. In the eighties, England looked with natural jealousy 
upon the French advance in North Africa, and so drew near 
the Triple Alliance. Especially did she cultivate friendly rela- 
tions with Italy, whose powerful fleet in the Mediterranean 
would have insured control of that sea in case of war. The 
relation, however, did not ripen into an alliance. Bismarck 
wanted England formally to join the Triple Alliance; but she 
feared entanglement in continental wars in which she might 
have no interest, and so maintained a position which some of 
her statesmen liked to call one of "splendid isolation." 

All these relations have begun to undergo sweeping changes 
in connection with new problems (§§ 585 ff.). 



610 THE NEW AGE. [§ 585 

II. THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE INTO AFRICA AND ASIA. 

585. European Politics merge into World Politics. — Toward 

the year 1900, another mighty change took place in interna- 
tional politics, vaster and swifter than any other in history. 
European politics were suddenly merged in world politics. 

This means that for the future we liav3 to consider a new 
stage, new actors, and new problems. Within the last few 
years the questions at issue between the Great Powers have 
ceased to be mainly Rhenish or Danubian, and have become 
African or A-siatic. The possession of petty counties on a 
little European river, though perhaps still in dispute, has 
ceased to interest statesmen and peoples who have fixed their 
eyes instead on vast continents. 

When this new greed for territory seized irpon Europe, the 
only important lands left to appropriate consisted of Africa 
and parts of Asia, with some islands in the Pacific. Australia 
was English. North America was held by the United States 
or England ; and the rest of the American continent was pro- 
tected beneath the shield of the Monroe Doctrine. Africa, 
however, was largely unappropriated, and in Asia the sta- 
tionary and apparently helpless empires of China, Turkey, and 
Persia invited attack. 

586. The Partition of Africa. — There followed a swift and 
peaceful division of the vast African continent. In 1880, only 
a few patches here and there on the coast were European : 
in 1891, the continent was mapped out between European 
claimants.^ 

For half a century, France had been extending her sway 
over Algeria on the north, and for nearly double that time 
England had held Cape Colony on the south. The events of 
1881 (§ 560) put Egypt and the Nile valley into English control, 
and a little earlier the explorations of Livingstone and Stanley 

1 Caldecott's English Colonization, 112, has a good map illustrating the 
transformation of this decade of years. Note also the dates on the map in 
this volume, facing page 611. 



§586] EXPANSION OF EUROPE INTO AFRICA. 611 

had awakened interest in the heart of the "Dark Continent." 
In the early seventies Stanley had proved that the upper por- 
tions of the Congo extended far into the interior, and that the 
immense region in the center of the continent was a rich and 
accessible country. In 1876, at the suggestion of Leopold of 
Belgium, the Congo International Association was organized to 
explore Central Africa and to stop the horrible slave trade 
carried on by the Arabs; and in 1879, Stanley, now in the 
service of Leopold and the Association, returned to the upper 
Congo and made the beginnings of a European state there. 
• Some disputes arose at once between the new Congo state 
and the Portuguese, regarding territory bordering the lower 
Congo; and in 1884, to prevent conflict, Bismarck called an 
international Congress at Berlin.^ This conference recognized 
the Congo State and the sovereignty of the International Asso- 
ciation. In return, the Association was pledged to permit 
free trade to all nations. The next year, Leopold became 
head of the "Congo Free State." The union with Belgium 
was declared to be merely personal; but in his will (1889) 
Leopold made Belgium heir to his rights of sovereignty in 
the new state. Belgium has also advanced money for internal 
improvements; and in return, by treaty with the Congo State, 
has acquired the right fully to annex the territory, if she 
chooses to do so. The administration is Belgian ; and in 1903, 
of the European population (some twenty-five hundred), about 
half was Belgian. The territory covers about one million 
square miles, and the natives number some thirty millions. 
In 1903 it came to light that the Belgian officials, in their 
efforts to secure large amounts of ivory, were treating the 
natives with horrible cruelty ; and for the past three years 
(1907) niaiay attempts have been made to secure European or 
American intervention in the interest of humanity. 

The establishment of the Congo State and the Berlin Con- 
ference were followed by the raising of the German flag in 

1 This was the first European Congress at which the United States was 
represented. . 



612 THE NEW AGE. [§ 587 

Africa (§ 484) ; and then began a wild scramble for territory, 
which at the end of six years (1891) left all the continent 
European, except Abyssinia, Tripoli, and Liberia. The posses- 
sions of Italy and Spain, however, are little more than foot- 
holds and are not likely to be materially extended, while the 
Portuguese territories are not new acquisitions, but the re- 
mains of a fading empire. The three leading European Powers 
in Africa, and the only ones that need to be considered seri- 
ously, are England, France, and Germany. Of these, England 
is far in the lead. Aside from small territories at other parts 
on the coast, her sway extends over the whole Nile valley, the 
richest part of the continent, and over extensive territories in 
the south. Her ambition has been to unite her possessions 
north and south ; but the Congo State and German East Africa 
were thrust between too soon. However, in the near future, 
an English railway (through the neutral Congo State) will un- 
doubtedly join Cairo and Cape Town, and open Africa to 
English civilization. 

France comes second in importance. She would have liked 
to join her realms on the east and on the west of the conti- 
nent ; but she found English territory thrust in between. 
German ambition was thwarted in like manner. Thus these 
three Powers seem to have mutually stalemated one another's 
efforts to completely dominate Africa. 

587. Threatened Conflicts. — So far, only twice has the 
rivalry between the Great Powers in Africa threatened war. 
a. About 1895, the English and French " spheres of influence " 
met at Lake Tchad. Then, in 1898, while the upper Nile 
valley and the Soudan were temporarily in revolt against Egypt 
and England, an enterprising French explorer, Marchand, ad- 
vanced from Lake Tchad far into the disputed districts and 
raised the French flag at Fashoda on the Nile. A victorious 
English force soon appeared, and, for a time, conflict in Africa 
and Europe seemed imminent ; but the French government 
finally withdrew its explorer, and the following year a conven- 
tion between the two Powers arranged the dispute peacefully. 



§589] NEW WORLD POWERS. 613 

b. In 1904, Germany encouraged Morocco to resist French 
encroachment (§ 451). War seemed probable ; but a com- 
promise was effected through an international conference at 
Algeciras (1906). French influence was sanctioned; but the 
process of turning Morocco completely into a protectorate was 
checked. 

588. The Situation in Asia before 1894. — The occupation of 
Asia by European states has proceeded jnore slowly than that 
of Africa, but it has moved with increasing rapidity in recent 
years. England, Eussia, and France are the three European 
countries concerned. Central and Northern Asia is Russian. 
The great, densely populated peninsula of Hindostan, with 
adjoining Burma, is English. The southeastern peninsula, 
since the plundering of Siam in 1896, is mainly French. The 
only independent states left in this greatest of the continents 
are Asia Minor (Turkey), Persia, Afghanistan, Siam, and 
China. Of these Afghanistan and Siam are mere remnants of 
" buffer states," separating England from Russia on one side 
and from France on the other. Apparently they are doomed 
to absorption by these powerful neighbors, though it has been 
the purpose of English policy in recent years to preserve them 
as barriers to her rivals. Persia, too, is virtually a dependency 
either of England or Russia, according to the varying fortune 
of the diplomacy of those countries ; and in the closing years 
of the nineteenth century it seemed that even the ancient 
Chinese Empire had begun to go to pieces. 

589. Appearance of Two New World Powers. — In the nine- 
ties two new actors appeared upon the stage of world politics. 
A war between Japan and China and the Spanish-American 
War added the United States and Japan to the circle of 
Powers interested in international politics. 

Until the year 1900 the United States found scope for its 
energies in peopling its great territories and in developing re- 
sources at home ; and, content with primacy on the American 
continents, it resolutely abstained from European complica- 
tions. But the Spanish-American War left it in possession of 



614 THE NEW AGE. [§ 589 

the Philippines ; and during the war, Hawaii was annexed. 
Tlius it held the mastery of the Pacific and was brought to the 
door of Asia ; and men saw at once that, under the modem 
conditions of trade and intercourse, the United States must 
henceforth be reckoned with as one of the leading Powers 
interested in world politics. 

In particular, the United States is desirous of securing a 
fair show for its trade in China, which has become one of its 
important customers. The similarity of English and American 
views regarding China and the likeness of the English and 
Americans in politics and culture incline the two peoples to 
act together in the East, in opposition to Russia, France, and 
Germany. Germany, too, seems to look with jealousy upon 
the American Monroe Doctrine as applied to South America. 
These conditions inclined to new combinations among the five 
'' World Powers " — the United States, England, Russia, Ger- 
many, and Prance. Germany and Russia, too, treat their de- 
pendencies as estates to be managed for the benefit of the 
peoples possessing them. This low standard has long since 
been rejected by the English-speaking nations. Thus a broad 
humanitarian interest was given to the question as to which 
group of powers should impose its civilization upon the indus- 
trious but passive millions of China. But the victory of Japan 
over Russia (§ 590) has introduced still another factor into 
the problem. 

Until the middle of the nineteenth century Japan had kept 
herself sealed to the outer world. For more than two cen- 
turies, indeed, to hold communication with foreigners had been 
a capital crime. But in 1853, Commodore Perry, under orders 
from the United States Government, by a show of force se- 
cured the admission of American trade to certain Japanese 
ports ; and then, after a short interval, Japan began to ex- 
change her Oriental civilization for western culture. Before 
the close of the century this transformation had been carried 
to a marvelous completeness. Army and navy, schools and in- 
dustry, took on modern character; and in 3889 the liberal 




100 Longitude ' 



from iO Greenwich 30 




20 Longitude ifl East 



§ 590] CHINA AND THE POWERS. 615 

Mikado (emperor) proclaimed a constitution which created a 
limited monarchy, witli a Diet of two liouses and a responsible 
ministry. 

Then, in 1894-1895, Japan and China engaged in war over 
Korea. With amazing rapidity little Japan overcame her 
huge antagonist on land and sea. The victory was complete. 
China ceded not only the island of Formosa, but also Port 
Arthur and sovereignty over the kingdom of Korea. Eussia, 
however, was already longing for these districts, and, backed 
by France, she forced Japan to renounce her gains upon the 
mainland. Japan was unprepared for war with these powers, 
and was wise enough to yield, but she began at once to make 
ready, patiently and skillfully, for the struggle with Russia 
which was to come ten years later (§ 591). 

590. The Opening of China. — In return for her interference 
against apan (§ 589) Russia secured from China the right to 
extend her Trans-Siberian railroad through Manchuria (§ 567), 
with provisions regarding the stationing of troops there which 
went far to make that great province a Russian possession. 
Then in 1898 Russia also secured Port Arthur, on the Gulf of 
Pechili, — the strongest naval fortress that China possessed. 
Roused by this advance of her rival, England at once demanded 
and obtained Wai-hei-wai, on the opposite shore of the Gulf, 
to enable her to check Russian movements. Somewhat earlier 
too (§ 484), on a curious pretext, Germany had seized Kiau 
Chau, with the surrounding district ; and now France seized 
the port of Kwang-Chau-Wau. Still earlier, it is true, France 
had begun to occupy the far southeast (§ 451), and England 
had held the island of Hong Kong ever since 1842 ; but the 
recent seizures commanded Pekin itself and the heart of the 
Empire, and it began to look as if China were doomed to parti- 
tion among the Powers of the west. 

In 1900, the Chinese resentment against the " western bar- 
barians " culminated in popular patriotic and fanatical uprisings 
which sought to extermiaate the Occidentals. The movement 
was organized by a secret society known as the Boxers. Mis- 



616 THE NEW AGE. [§ 591 

sionaries and scattered Europeans were massacred and the 
foreign embassies themselves were besieged at Pekin. Tlie 
Powers (the United States and Japan included) sent joint 
forces to relieve their beleaguered representatives. After hor- 
rible and almost incredible barbarities by the invading armies, 
especially by the Eussians, Pekin was taken and sacked and 
the European residents were rescued. 

591. The Russian-Japanese War. — Largely through the in- 
sistance of the United States, no territorial indemnities were 
demanded from China at the suppression of the Boxer troubles. 
During the campaign, however, Russia occupied Manchuria 
with troops, claiming that such action was necessary to protect 
her railroad there, and promising to withdraw at the return of 
peace. In 1902, this pledge was solemnly repeated to the 
Powers ; but, before 1904, it was clear that such promises had 
been made cynically, only to be broken, and that Russia was 
determined not to loosen her grasp upon the coveted province. - 
Moreover, she began to encroach upon Korea. To Japan this 
treacherous Russian approach seemed to imperil not only her 
commercial prosperity (in Korea), but her independence as a 
nation ; and after months of futile negotiations, and a pressing 
ultimatum for Russian withdrawal, she resorted to war. 

Diplomacy had at least assured Japan that she would have 
only Russia to fight. England and Japan, in 1902, in a treaty 
designed to preserve the integrity of China, had agreed to aid 
each other in war if either were attacked by more than one 
power. Erance and Russia, with just the opposite policy in 
China, were allied by an old and similar treaty. Thus the two 
alliances neutralized each other, and Erance and England kept 
out of the struggle. The United States gave its sympathy 
frankly to Japan, but to take part in the war would have been 
contrary to its fixed policy. Moreover, just before the out- 
break of the war, England and France had drawn so close to 
each other in diplomacy, both in their African policy and in 
their arbitration treaty of 1903 (§ 594), that Erench support 
for Russia was by no means certain even if England were 



I 



§ 591] RUSSIAN-JAPANESE WAR. 617 

drawn into the war. Under such conditions Germany was not 
likely to enter the contest, despite the sympathy of her ruling 
classes for Russia. 

Still the case for Japan looked dark. To most of the world, 
Eussian advance in Asia seemed irresistible, and the little 
island-state was thought doomed to defeat. But Russia fought 
at long range. She had to transport troops and supplies across 
Asia by a sivgle-tracJc railroad. Her railway service was of a 
low order (like all her forms of engineering), and her rolling 
stock was inferior and insufficient. Congestion of traffic and 
long delays at critical moments were the inevitable results. 
To be sure, it was supposed that immense supplies had already 
been accumulated at Port Arthur and in Manchuria, in ex- 
pectation of war; but it proved that high officials had made 
way with the larger part of the money and that neither army 
nor navy was properly equipped. Inefficiency, corruption, 
lack of organization, were matched only by boastful overcon- 
fidence and silly contempt for the foe. These drawbacks 
could not be counterbalanced by Russia's immense bu.t unavail- 
able resources nor by the desperate bravery and heroic endur- 
ance of her poorly led soldiery. 

Japan, on the other hand, had the most perfectly organized 
army, hospital service, and commissariat the world has ever 
seen. Her leaders, whether or not they had great military 
genius, were at least patriotic, honest, faithful, and always 
equal to the occasion ; and the whole nation was animated by 
a spirit of ardent self-sacrifice. By her admirable organiza- 
tion, Japan was able, at all critical moments, to confront the 
Russians with equal or superior numbers, even after a year of 
war, when the line of battle had rolled back several hundred 
miles toward the Russian base. 

At the outset, Japan could hope for success only by securing 
naval control of Asiatic waters. Russia had gathered at Port 
Arthur a fleet supposedly much stronger than Japan's whole 
navy ; but (February 8, 1904) Japan struck the first blow, 
torpedoing several mighty battleships and cruisers. The rest 



618 THE NEW AGE. [§ 501 

of the Russian fleet was blockaded in the harbor ; and, to the 
end of the war, Japan transported troops and supplies by 
water almost without interference. 

Korea was swiftly overrun, and, on February 23, its govern- 
ment recognized a Japanese protectorate. The Russians were 
driven back from the Yalu in a great battle, and Po7-t Arthur 
was invested (May 28) by land as well as by sea. Seven 
months later (January, 1905), that fortress, which had been 
boastfully declared invulnerable, capitulated, after terrible 
suffering and reckless sacrifice of life on both sides. Mean- 
time, in September, the Japanese army won a remarkable vic- 
tory at Liaoxi Yang, and, soon afterward, repulsed a desperate 
attack, driving the Russians back on Mukden. The severe 
northern winter interrupted the campaign ; but in March, 
1905, the Japanese resumed their advance. The Battle of 
Mukden is the most tremendous military struggle in history. 
It lasted fifteen days. The battle front extended a hundred 
miles, and a million men were engaged, with all the terrible, 
destructive agencies of modern science at their command. 
The Russians were completely routed. They lost more than a 
hundred thousand men, and were driven back on Harbin in 
disorder. It seemed that Russia would be unable, for that 
summer at least, to gather another army in the East able to 
take the field. 

Russia's only chance was to regain command of the sea. 
During the winter of 1905, after a year of delays, an attempt 
had been begun. A huge fleet, far exceeding the Japanese 
navy in number and in size, but poorly equipped and miserably 
officered, set out on the long voyage from the Baltic. By a 
breach of strict neutrality on the part of France, it was allowed 
to rest and refit at Madagascar, and again at the French sta- 
tions near Southern China ; and in May it reached the Sea of 
Japan. There it was annihilated by the splendidly handled 
Japanese fleet, under Admiral Togo, in the greatest of the 
world's naval battles. 

Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, now 



[§ 592 MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENTS. 619 

"offered his good offices" to secure peace; and a meeting of 
envoys was arranged (August, 1905, at Portsmouth, N.H.), at 
which the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed. Japan's demands 
were exceedingly moderate, and she yielded even a part of 
these at President Roosevelt's urgent appeal for peace. Russia 
agreed (1) to withdraw from Chinese Manchuria, (2) to cede the 
Port Arthur branch of her railroad to China, (3) to recognize 
the Japanese protectorate in Korea, and (4) to cede to Japan 
the southern half of Sakhalin, — an island formerly belonging 
to Japan but occupied by Russia in 1875. 

The most important resiilts of the war were indirect results. 
Russia was checked in her career of aggression in Europe and 
toward India, as well as in the Far East, and the collapse of her 
despotic government gave opportunity for the beginning of a 
great revolution in society and politics (§ 575). Japan, on the 
other hand, won recognition as one of the foremost "world 
powers," and, apparently, will take over, from the western na- 
tions, the mighty task of regenerating China. This last con- 
sideration, alone, makes the victory of incalculable significance. 

III. MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENTS — THE OUTLOOK. 

592. Increasing Rate of Progress. — The world of 1900 is 
further removed from the world of 1800 than the world of 
1800 was from the world of 800. That is, the* last century 
has counted more for human progress than the preceding 
thousand years, and Napoleon's day is really closer to Charle- 
magne's than to ours. The three mighty agents in this recent 
transformation have been democracy in politics and industry, 
humane sentiment in morals, and scientific invention in the 
intellectual field. The growth of democracy has been the 
chief theme of the latter half of this volume : since 1789 
practically all the civilized peoples of the western world, 
except the Russians, have wrested constitutions from their 
rulers and now control their own political destinies, with such 
machinery as manhood suffrage and compulsory universal 



620 



THE NEW AGE. 



[§593 



education to assist them. Tlie gentler spirit of recent times 
has abolished slavery and serfdom, ameliorated the laws, and 
brought about zealous, organized, and intelligent efforts to 
lessen suffering and misery all over the globe. But perhaps 
the most marvelous phase of the " Wonderful Century " is 
the scientific advance. 

593. Science and Human Life. — The nineteenth century at 
different times has been called the age of steam, the iron age, 
the steel age, the age of electricity. Each name has been de- 
served. Since the inventions of making fire, of the bow, of 
domesticating animals, of smelting iron, and of the alphabet, 
all the inventions of man up to the year 1800 probably count 




The First Railway Passenger Train, from Liverpool to Manchesl.er, 
September 1, 1830, drawn by Stephenson's improved engine, Rocket. (The 
first locomotive had been built about fifteen years earlier, but it had been 
used only to haul coal from the mines.) 

for less than those since that year.^ Anciently, science was 
rather the plaything of philosophers. Now it has become the 
servant of mankind. In civilized countries, during the nine- 
teenth century, human life was lengthened over a fourth, and 
the population of the civilized world was nearly trebled. 
This larger amount of life, too, has been lifted to a higher 
plane. There is more life and better life. Wealth is more 
abundant; and the laboring masses, though still getting far 
too little of it, get a larger proportion than formerly. A day's 



1 A. R. Wallace, in The Wonderfvl Century (Dodd, Mead and Co.), enu- 
merates fifteen epoch-making inventions from the preceding ages up to tlie 
year 1800, and then counts up twenty-tour of essentially equal rank for the 
nineteenth centuiy. 



I 693] MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENTS. 621 

work buys more comfort than in 1800 or in 1850. Owing to 
this increased wealtli and to the new conveniences of modern 
life, the people of the world have undergone a marvelous 
change in their da.ilj habits. It is probably true that the 
life of an industrious, healthy artisan of to-day is more en- 
joyable than was that of a great noble a century ago. 

As we have seen, this larger and better life has been spread- 
ing over the globe ; but steam and electricity bind the most 
scattered portions together more closely than adjacent vil- 
lages were joined in the near past. The world is more and 
more compact. The ox-cart and the pack-horse of 1800 are 
replaced as carriers by long trains of cars, swiftly carrying 
their hundreds of tons of all kinds of freight across conti- 
nents. New methods of banking make it possible to transfer 
credit and to do business with magical quickness between dis- 
tant portions of the earth. To say nothing of the telegraph, 
lines of communication are so organized that it costs no more 
to send a letter around the globe than to send it around the 
corner. The Minnesota farmer's market is not Minneapolis, 
or Chicago, or London, but the world. The sheep-raiser in 
Australia, the Kansas farmer, the New York m-crchant, the 
London banker, are parts of one industrial organism, and 
whatever touches one of them, affects all the rest. There is 
a new social unity, or solidarity, among men. 

And this new unity is not merely one of material interests : 
it has its intellectual and its moral side. Any happening of 
consequence is known within an hour in London, St. Petersburg, 
Pekin, Kew York, and San Francisco, and, within a day or 
two, in almost every hamlet where civilized men live. News 
spreads over the entire surface of the globe as fast as gossip 
used to run down a village street. Hence a closer human 
interest, and a greater unity of sympathy and opinion. A 
" world opinion " now takes form and makes itself felt in 
important human concerns almost as promptly as village 
opinion could be brought to bear upon an individual citizen's 
conduct a century ago. 



622 THE NEW AGE. [§ 594 

594. The Hague Conference and the International Tribunal. — • 

The picture of course lias its darker side. Tlie crowded popu- 
lations of the modern world still live and work under condi- 
tions of misery and disease and oftentimes of want. Great cities 
are breeding-places of crime. Sometimes the civilized nations 
show callous disregard of humane principles, when w^eaker or 
barbarous peoples are concerned. And over the civilized peoples 
themselves broods the danger of annihilating war, more terrible 
because of the new inventions of this scientific age. 

Happily, a great movement to lessen this last peril is in 
progress. The nations have begun to adopt permanent arbi- 
tration treaties with one another, and to establish standing 
international tribunals for the settlement of disputes. 

In earlier times an impending war was sometimes averted 
by diplomacy or by the mediation of a powerful neighbor ; 
but arbitration, in the modern sense, means neither diplomatic 
negotiation nor mediation. It means adjudication of disputed 
points by an impartial body of experts resembling a low court, 
following the forms of a court of justice, hearing evidence and 
argument in public, and basing its decision on the merits of 
the case. The first arbitration of this kind in modern times 
was arranged by one clause ^ of the Jay Treaty of 1794 between 
England and the United States. For nearly a hundred years 
this sensible device continued to be used mainly by the two 
English-speaking nations, but before the close of the nineteenth 
century it had begun to spread rapidly to other lands. During 
that century several hundred disputes between nations were set- 
tled honorably, peacefully, and justly, by this process, — many 
of them critical disputes, which might easily have led to war.^ 

But all these cases of arbitration concerned some individual 
dispute, regarding which a special treaty had to be negotiated 

1 Regarding the disputed boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia. 

2 The student of American history will recall the arbitrations with England 
regarding the Alabama damages, the Behring Sea Seal Fisheries, the Vene- 
zuela territory, the Alaskan boundary, and several other disputes concerning 
our northern boundary at the eastern and western extremities. 



§ 594] MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENTS. 623 

before arbitration could begin. This left much to be desired ; 
and the closing years of the nineteenth century saw agitation 
for something better — in the form of " general arbitration 
treaties " by which nations might agree in advance to submit 
disputes to a certain court of arbitrators. In 1897 a treaty of 
this kind between England and the United States failed of 
adoption because of opposition in the United States Senate, 
though it had been recommended vigorously first by President 
Cleveland and afterward by President McKinley. Then lead- 
ership in this great movement passed for the time away from 
the English-speaking peoples, but progress grew even more 
rapid. 

On August 24, 1898, by order of the Tsar, the Russian Min- 
ister of Foreign Affairs handed to the representatives of the 
different nations in St. Petersburg a written suggestion for a 
world conference to consider some means for arresting the 
danger of war and for lessening the burden of the armed 
peace. Out of this suggestion there grew the Hague Con- 
ference of 1899. Twenty-six nations were represented, in- 
cluding Mexico, Siam, Japan, and Persia, — practically all the 
independent states of the world except the South American 
republics. Never before has any gathering so nearly ap- 
proached a "parliament of man," and never has a great inter- 
national congress accomplished so great a Avork. It was not 
found possible to provide for any limitation upon the arma- 
ment of different nations ; but certain agreements were reached 
to regulate the methods of war in the interests of greater 
humanity, and the Congress did provide a permanent Inter- 
national Tribunal for arbitration between nations. 

No nation, of course, is compelled to submit its quarrels to 
this court; but it is of supreme consequence that machinery 
is ready so that nations can escape war, without loss of dig- 
nity, if they desire. No doubt the battle flags will yet be 
unfurled more than once ; but the Hague Conference, with the 
establishment of the Hague Tribunal, is the longest single step 
ever taken toward the " federation of the world." 



624 THE NEW AGE. [§ 594 

The next step was fov groups of nations to pledge them- 
selves to make nse of this machinery, or of similar machinery. 
This pledge is the essence of a "general arbitration treaty." 
The first such treaty was adopted by two South American 
countries. While the Hague Conference was sitting, Chili 
and Argentina (which had not been invited to the Conference) 
were on tlie verge of war over a boundary dispute in the Andes. 
For the next two years both governments made vigorous prep- 
arations, — piling up war taxes, increasing armaments, building 
and buying ships of war. But at the last moment a popular 
movement, led by bishops of the Catholic Church in the two 
countries, brought about arbitration ; and soon after, the bound- 
ary was adjusted rationally by a commission of geographers 
and legal experts. So well pleased were the two nations with 
this individual case of arbitration that they proceeded to adopt 
a '' general treaty " by which they bound themselves, for a 
period of five years, to submit all disputes which might arise 
between them to a specific tribunal. 

This was the first "general arbitration treaty" ever actually 
adopted (June, 1903). But others were already in preparation 
in Europe ; and, four months later (October, 1903), France and 
England adopted one, agreeing (with certain reservations) to 
submit future disputes to the Hague Tribunal. Since that 
time some thirty such treaties have gone into operation. To- 
day (January, 1907) every European state ^ west of Russia is 
a party to at least one general arbitration treaty, and some of 
them are parties to seven or eight ; while in several cases tradi- 
tional enemies, like France and Italy, and Italy and Austria, 
are joined by these peaceful compacts. 



1 The United States as yet has no standing arbitration treaty with another 
nation. In the spring of 1906 the Senate slauglitered a hunch of ten treaties 
of tliis character which had been negotiated with the leading nations of the 
world by John Hay, our Secretary of State, and which were strenuously rec- 
ommended by President Roosevelt. 



^M 



APPENDIX. 



A CLASSIFIED BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

The following works are classified, first by period, and then 
under each period in two groups. In the judgment of the 
writer, all high school libraries should contain Group I, or an 
equivalent, under each division, and large high schools may 
with advantage possess Group II also. A reduction of from 
twenty to thirty per cent from the list price can usually be 
secured. 

When a book belongs to a series, the name of the series, in 
quotation marks, is usually given in parenthesis. Works 
marked with a * should be present in more than one copy. 

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (800-1520 a.d.). 
Group I. 

SOURCE MATERIAL. 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Bohn edition). $1.50. 

Colby, Selections from the Sources of English History. $1.50. 
Longmans. 

Chronicles of the Crusades (Bohn Library). $1.50. 

English History from Contemporary Writers, edited by F. York 
Powell. A series of ten small volumes, 40 cents each, pub- 
lished from 1886 to 1894 by Putnams, as follows : Archer, 
Crusade of Bichard I; Ashley, Edward III and His Wars; 
Barnard, Stronghow^ s Conquest of Ireland ; Hctton, Misrule 
of Henry III; Simon of Montfort ; St. Thomas of Canterbury ; 
Jacobs, The Jews of Angevin England; Powell, Alfred and 
the Danes ; Smith, Troublous Days of Bichard II; Taylor, 
England under Charles II. 

62r 



628 



APPENDIX. 



The Boy^s Froissart, edited by Lanier. $2.50. Scribners. 

* Henderson, Select Historical Documents. $1.50. Macmillan. 

* Hill (Mabel), iiderf?/ Z>oci<9neKis. $2.00. Longmans . , 1901. 
JoiNviLLE, Memoir of St. Louis. (Various editions.) 

3 o^B?,, Source Extracts for Medieval Civilizatio7i. $0.50. Ains- 

worth 1899. 

Mandeville (Sir John), Travels. $1.50. Macmillan. 

Ma7-co Polo, The Story of. $0.20. Cassell. 

Pennsylvania. Translations and Beprints from Original Sources. 

7 vols. $1.50 each. University of Pennsylvania . . 1892-1900. 



MODERN ACCOUNTS. 

* Adams (G. B.), Growth of the French Nation. $1.25. Macmillan 

* Civilization during the 3Iiddle Ages. $2.50. Scribners . 

*Andkews (C. M.), History of England. $1.50. AUyn & Bacon 
Archer (T. A.), Bichard the Lion-Hearted. $1.50. Putnams 

* Archer and Kingsford, The Crusades ("Nations"). $1.50, 

Putnams 

Balzani, The Popes and the Hohenstaufen. $0.80. Longmans 
Boyesen (H. H.), iVoj-ioaz/ (" Nations"). $1.50. Putnams 
Brown (Horatio), The Venetian Bepuhlic ("Temple Primer") 

$0.40. Macmillan 

*Bryce, Holy Boman Empire. $1.85. Macmillan . 
*Cheyney (E. P.), Industrial and Social History of England 

$1.40. Macmillan 

Church, Beginnings of the Middle Ages. $0.75. Longmans 
Clarke, The Cid Campeador ("Heroes"). $1.50. Putnams 
Cornish, Chivalry. $1.75. Macmillan .... 
Cunningham, Western Civilization (Vol. II, Medieval and Mod 

ern). $1.25. Macmillan 

*EMETs.TOii, 3Iedieval Europe. $1.65. Ginn 

Desiderius Erasmus (^^ Kevoes^^). $1.50. Putnams . 

Fisher (G. P.), History of the Christian Church. $3.00. Hodder 
'FnE-EMXs, William theConqueror. $0.75. Macmillan 
Gardiner, A Studenfs History of England to 1885. $3.00 

Longmans 

GiBBiNS, Industrial History of England. $1.00. Methuen, London 
Gray, The Children's Crusade. (New ed.) $1.50. Houghton 

* Green, Short History of the English People. $1.20. Harpers 
Green (Mrs.), i/enry //. $0.75. Macmillan 
YLvGYms QT.), Alfred the Oreat. $1.50. Macmillan . 



1897 
1894 
1903 
1892 

1895 
1888 
1886 

1902 

1887 

1901 

1877, 
1897 
1901 

1900 
1896 
1901 



1894 

1898, 
1891 
1900, 
1879 
1889 
1878 



A CLASSIFIED BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



629 



Hunt, English Church in the Iliddle Ages (" Epochs of Church 

History"). $0.80. New York 

Jesks, Edward Flantagenet ('■'■Heroes''^). |1.50. Putnains 
Jessopp, TJie Coming of the Friars. §1.25. Putnams . 
JiRiczEK, Northern Hero Legends. $0.40. Macmillan 
Johnson (A. H.), Normans in Europe. fLOO. Longmans 
KiNGSFORD, Henry F (" Heroes "). $1.50. Putnams 
Lane-Poole, ;S'a?rtdi?t (" Heroes"). $1.50. Putnams 
IjXvrie, Bise and Constitution of Universities. $1.50. Applcton 
Lodge, Closeof the Middle Ages ('^Feriods^''). $1.40. Macmillan 
Mabie (H. W.), Norse Stories Retold. $1.00. Dodd, Mead, & Co 
*MoNTAGOE, Elements of English Constitutional History. $1.25 

Longmans 

*Mdneo and Whitcomb, Medieval and Modern Europe. $1.50 

Appleton 

NoRGATE (Kate), John Lacldand. $1.50. Macmillan 
Oliphant (Mrs.), Jeanne d'' Are ("Heroes"). $1.50. Putnams 
Oman, 77ie Daj-A; ^gres ("Periods"). $1.40. Macmillan . 

The Bysantine Empire ('■'^litions''^). $1.50. Putnams 

VejlB.s {E.), Fall of Co7istantinople. $2.00. Harpers 

Perry (F.), ^S^. LoMJS (" Heroes"). $1.50. Putnams 

Plumjier, Alfred the Great. $1.50. Oxford 

Poole, Wycliffe and 3Iovements for Beform ("Epochs of Church 

History"). $0.80. Longmans 

Poole, ^Mr^•e^/ (" Nations "). $1.50. Putnams 

Powell (Edgar), The Peasant Bising in East Anglia in 1381 

$1.50. New York 

*Robinson, Western Europe. $1.50. Ginn ... 

Saintsbvry, Flourishing of Bomance. $1.50. Scribners • 
Seigsobos, The Feudal Begime. $0.50. Holt 
Sergeant, t/o/itt fFj/cZi/ (" Heroes"). $1.50. Putnams . 
Stephens (W. E. W. ), Hildebrand and his Times ("Epochs of 

Church History"). $0.80. Longmans 
Story of the Burnt Njal (The). (Dasent, translator.) $1.50 

New York 

*Stubbs, Early Plantagenets ("Epochs"). $1.00. Longmans 
Terry, History of England to 1901. $2.00. Scott, Foresman, & Co, 
Tout (T. F.), ^d!ioarcZ/. $0.60. Macmillan 

The Empire and the Papacy {^^Feviods ''''). $1.40. Macmillan 

WiEL, Venice ("Nations"). $1.50. Putnams . 
York-Powell, Alfred the Truth Teller. $1.50. Putnams . 
ZiMMERN (H.), T/ie £^ansa ("Nations"). $1.50. Putnams 



1898. 
1900. 
1888. 
1902. 
1893. 
1903. 
1898. 
1886. 
1890. 
1882. 

1897. 



1903. 
1901. 
1894. 
1893. 
1898. 
1885. 
1901. 
1902. 

1889. 
1889. 

1899. 
1902. 
1897. 
1902. 
1892. 



1891. 
1887. 
1901. 
1893. 
1898. 
1894. 
1894. 
1890. 



630 APPENDIX. 

Group II. 

SOURCE MATERIAL. 

Adams and Stephens, Select Documents of English Constitutional 

History. |2.50. Macmillan 1902. 

Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, and Spain (Johues' 
translation). $5.25. 

Lee, a Source Book of English History. ^2.00. Holt. 

Marco Polo (The Story of, by Noah Brooks). $1.00. Century Co. 

Paston Letters {The). (Gairdner's edition). 3 vols. $5.25. 

MODERN ACCOUNTS. 

Alzog, a Manual of Universal Church History. 3 vols. (A 

strong work by a conservative Roman Catholic.) |8.00. 

Robert Clark & Co 1874. 

Ameh-r A-LJ, A Short History of the Saracens. $3.00. Macmillan 1899. 
Ashley, Introduction to English Economic History. Vol. I, 

Parti, $1.25; Part II, $2.60. Longmans . . . 1892-1896. 

Bemont and Monod, Medieval Europe. $1.60. Holt . . 1902. 

BowKER (and Others), Alfred the Great. $1.75. Macmillan . 1899. 

Broderick, The Univej-sity of Oxford. $0.60. Longmans . 1887. 

Cambridge Modern History (The). Vol.1. $3.75. Macmillan. 1902. 

Cox, TAe Cr?(s«des ("Epochs"). $1.00. Longmans . . 1874. 

Creighton, History of the Papacy. 6 vols. $12.00. Longmans 1882. 
Cunningham, English Industry and Commerce. 2 vols. $8.50. 

Macmillan 1901. 

Cunningham and McArthur, Outlines of English Industrial 

History. $1.50. Macmillan 1895. 

CvTT?,, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages. $3.75. New York 1872. 

Parish Priests and Their People. $3.00. London , . 1898. 

Du Chaillu, The Viking Age. 2 vols. $5.75. Murray . . 1889. 

Duffy, Tiiscan 7?ep?t6?ics (" Nations"). $1.50. Putnams . 1892. 

TiuRVY, History of the Middle Ages. $2.00. Holt . . 1891. 

Farnell (Ida), Lives of the Troubado^irs. $3.00. London . 1896. 
Fisher (Herbert), The Medieval Empire. 2 vols. $6.30. 

Macmillan 1898. 

Freeman, Ottoman Poiver in Europe. $1.50. Macmillan . . 1879. 
Gairdner, bowses of Lancaster and York ("Epochs"). $1.00. 

Longmans 1886. 

GiLMAN, T7ie iS'amcens ("Nations"). $1.50. Putnams . . 1887. 

G^^^^ {j5.^.), The Conquest of England. $4.50. Macmillan . 1883. 



A CLASSIFIED BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



631 



Green (Mrs. J. R.), Town Life in the Fifteenth Century. 2 vols, 

$6.40. Macmillau 

H.\zLiTT, Venetian Bepuhlic. 2 vols. $8.50. London 
HESDERSoy, Sho7t History of Germamj. 2 vols. $4.00. Macmillan 
James (G. P. R.), History of Chivalry. $2.00. Harpers . 
JussERAXD, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. $3.00 

London .......... 

Keary, Tlie Vikings in Western Christendom. $2.50. Putnams 
Lavisse, General View of the Political History of Europe. $L25, 

Longmans ......... 

Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy. (2d edition. ) Boston 

LiJEKE, History of Art. 2 vols. $7.50. Dodd, Mead & Co. 

MiJATOviCH, Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks. $1.85. 

Low .......... 

MiLMAN, Latin Christianity. 9 vols. $11.00. London 
Moore (C. H.), Gothic Architecture. $4.50. Macmillan . 
Moiiisos, Life a?id Times of St. Bernai'd. $1.85. Macmillan 
MuLLiNGER, University of Cambridge. $1.00. Longmans . 
Oliphant (Mrs.), J/ffl/t'ers o/ Fem'ce. $2.65. Macmillan , 

Makers of Florence. $2.65. Macmillan 

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1894. 
1900. 
1902. 
1845. 

1891. 
1891. 

1891. 
1884. 
1875. 

1892. 
1867. 
1890. 
1861. 

1888. 
1881. 
1882. 



1891. 

1884. 

1895. 
1894. 
1867. 
1890. 

1882. 
1892. 

1883. 

1893. 

1886. 
1899. 

1901. 



682 APPENDIX. 

Vincent, The Age of Hildebrand. $2.00. Scribners . ... 1896. 
Walker (Thos.), The End of Villeinage in England. $1.25. 

London 1900. 



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Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch. $1.50. Putnams 
Seebohm, The Protestant Beformation. 
Seeley, Expansion of England. $1.10 
Growth of British Policy. 2 vols. 

varsity Press 



^0.65. Longmans 
Macmillan . 
2.75. Cambridge Uni- 



1891 

1804 
1900 



1890 

1883 
1887. 
1890 
1893 

1898 
1901 



1901 

1898, 
1874 

1885 

1895. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE NAPOLEONIC ERA 

(1789-1815). 

Geoup I. 



SOURCE MATERIAL. 

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H. W. Wilson Co., Minneapolis 



1904 



MODERN ACCOUNTS. 

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Fyffe, Modern Europe to 1878. 3 vols, in one. $2.75. Holt . 1884. 



634 APPENDIX. 

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Morris, The French Bevolution and the First Empire, $1.85. 

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Ropes, The First Napoleon. $2.00. Houghton . . . • 1890. 

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EUROPE SINCE 1814. 

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I 



A CLASSIFIED BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



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Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions in Europe and 

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Ke-ltits., Partition of Africa. $4.00. London 



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1894 

1903 
1900 
1899, 
1893, 



636 APPENDIX. 

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Life of Voltaire. $1.50. Macmillan 1886. 

Life of Bousseau. 2 vols. $3.00. Macmillan . . . 1873. 

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Probyn, Italy from the Death of Napoleon to the Death of Victor 

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Rose, Bise of Democracy in Great Britain. $1.25. Chicago & 

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RosEBERT, Prti ("English Statesmen"). $0.75. Macmillan . 1891. 

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Samuelson, Boumania., Past and Present. $1.50. London . 1882. 

Sergeant, New Greece. $5.25. Cassell 1879. 

Smith (Beckford), Greece under King George. $3.00. London 1893. 

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Stefniak, The Bussian Peasantry. 2 vols. $6.25. Sonnenschein 1888. 

Stroebel, Spanish Bevolution of 1868-1874. $1.50. Boston . 1898. 

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INDEX. 



The references are to sections, unless otherioise indicated. 

Pronuuciation, except for familiar names and terms, is sliown by division 
into syllables and accentuation. When diacritical marks for English names 
are needed, the common marks of Webster's Dictionaries are used. German 
and French pronunciation can be indicated only imperfectly to those who are 
not familiar with the languages ; but attention is called to the following marks : 
the soft aspirated guttural g of the German is marked g ; the corresponding 
ch (as in Icli) is marked ch ; the nasal French n is marked ii ; the sound of n 
like ny in canyon is marked n ; for the German a and du the equivalents are 
indicated, to prevent confusion with English a; o is always the German 
letter; and il is the German diphthong or the equivalent French u. In 
French words with an accent on the final syllable, that accent only is marked ; 
but it should be understood that in such words the syllables as a rule receive 
nearly equal stress. 



Aachen (ach'en') , 14. 

Ab'e-lard, ISOc, 183. 

Absolute Monarchy, 256; in Aus- 
tria, 491 ; in Denmark, 521 ; in Eng- 
land, 237, 249; in France, 149, 200; 
in Germany, 369; in Eussia, 568, 
573; in Spain, 156, 397, 495. 

Act of Settlement (in England) , 253. 

Adelheid (ild'el-hit), 53. 

A'dri-an, Pope, p. 84 note. 

Africa, England in, 547, 558, 560, 563; 
France in, 451; Germany in, 484; 
Italy in, 489; Portuguese in, 197; 
Spain in, 501 ; partition of, 586. 

Agincourt (aj'in-kort, Fr. a-zhaii- 
koor'), battle of, 139. 

Agriculture, feudal, 26, 34, .36 ; Mo- 
hammedan, 89 ; gives place to other 
industries, 107; in Holland, 225; 
ruined in Germany 231 ; in England, 
234, 528 a; in France. 290,292-294, 
450; in Prussia, 273; in Russia, 570. 
' Aix-la-Chapelle (aks-la-sha-pel') , 
Peace of, 274. 

Al-bi-gen'ses, 82, 83, 150, 152 a, 214. 

Alexander l"of Russia, 365, 373, 376, 
377, 382, p. 400 note, 573. 

Alexander II, 569, 570, 572, 573, 577. 

Alexander III, 573. 



637 



Alfred the Great, of England, 16, 178. 

Al-ge'ri-a, 446, 451, 586. 

Alliances of European powers, in 
religious wars, 223, 229, 230, 232; 
for balance of power, 255, 259, 261, 
263, 276-278 ; against Napoleon, 351, 
355, 356, 367, 372-375; in Congress 
of Vienna, 376-381, 457, 466, 505, 
523; the "Holy Alliance," 395-401; 
in Europe to-day, 583-584. 

Al-sace', 2.32 h, 292, 379 note, 434, 

_ 583. 

Al'va, Duke of, 221. 

Amadeo (a-ma-da'o), 496. 

America, discovered, 172 note, 197; 
Spain in, 220, 380 note, 393 note, 
398; immigration of persecuted 
Protestants, 232 note, p. 257 note 3, 
236, 243 note, 260 h ; England in, 
261, 275, 277, 281c, 283; France in, 
255, 258, 261, 282, 308, 315, 451 ; wars 
in, 261, 275, 277, 283; American 
Revolution, 284, 285, 303 note 3, 
529. See Monroe Doctrine, United 
States, Canada. 

Amiens (a-me-ah'). Peace of, 356. 

Anabaptists, 208 note. 

Anarchists, in France, 442 note; in 
Italy, 488. See Nihilists. 



638 INDEX. 

References are to sections. 



An'dre-a del Sar'to, 193. 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 187, 188. 

Anjou (an'joo; Fr. prou., oii-zhoo')) 
41, 127, 151. 

Anne, Queen of England, 204 d, 253, 
281 a. 

Anne Bolejm (bool'in) , 218. 

An'selm, p. 83 note 2, 183. 

Aquitaine (ak-we-tau') , 41, 127, 139, 
p. 164 note. 

Arabs, in Italy, 180 a, 184 ; slave 
trade, 586. See Moliamraedans. 

Arbitration (international), 594. 

Archbistiops, feudal position, 38; 
duties and powers of, 72. 

Architecture, feudal, 37; Moham- 
medan, 89; medieval, 192; of Re- 
naissance, 193. 

A-ri-os'to, 189. 

A'ris-tot-le, 182, 184, 189. 

Ar-ma'da, 201, 218, 223. 

Army, feudal, 28; in England, 245, 
246, 249, 251; in France, 42 c, 345; 
in Germany, 48, 272, 274, 369, 464, 
465, 483 ; in Italy, 488. 

Arnulf, of Germany, 47. 

Arrondissement (ar-ron-des-mou') , 
325, 447. 

Art, medieval, 192; of Renaissance, 
193, 194. 

Artois (ar-twa'), Count of. See 
Charles X of France. 

Asia, early progress in, 1 ; Crusades, 
92-105 ; Tartars in, 91, 168 ; England 
in, 275, 277, 588; France in, 451, 
588; Russia in, 266, 365, 588, 589; 
Turkey in, 385; the Powers in, 
588, 589. See India. 

Asia Minor, Turks in, 91; Germany 
in, 484. 

Augsburg (agz'berg, Ger. owgs'- 
hooro), and Hungarians, 49; Con- 
fession of, 210; Peace of, 211, 219, 2.32. 

Aus'ter-litz, battle of, 365, 370, 381. 

AustraUa, 545, 556-558, 562, 564. 

Austria, beginning, 50 note ; seized 
from Bohemia, 158 ; basis of power 
of the later Emperors, 160; threat- 
ened by Mohammedans, 170 ; table 
of rulers, 202 ; in Grand Alliance, 
259; War of Spanish Succession, 



261 ; Danubian policy, 262 ; wars of 
Austrian Succession, 274; Seven 
Years' War, 276 ; war with France, 
331, 335, 340, 342, 350, 351, 355, 356; 
with Napoleon, 364, 365, 367, 370, 
372, 374, 375; "Austrian Empire, '■ 
370; Congress of Vienna, 376, 377, 
380, 381, 457 ; President of German 
Confederacy, 377 a ; attitude 
toward Reaction, 382; rule of Met- 
ternich, 383-385, 387-392, 395, 400, 
452 ; Austria-Hungary, 385,491-493 ; 
Italian War, 429 b, 430 a; in 1848, 
452-456; in Italy, 457-461; Schles- 
wig-Holstein affair, 466 ; Six Weeks' 
War, 467; Peace of Prague, 468; 
alliance after 1871 , 583-584. 

Austrian Succession, wars of the, 
274, 275. 

Avignon (a-ven-you'), 165; Great 
Schism, 166. 

Babylonian Ca^ptivity of the 
church, 87, 165. 

Bacon, Francis, 182, 199, 234. 

Bacon, Roger, p. 156 note, 186, 195 
note, 197. 

Balance of Power, origin of theory, 
255. 

Balkan Peninsula, invaded by 
Turks, 168; free states in, 385; to 
1878, 576-577; since 1878, 578-582. 
See Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, 
Rou mania, Servia. 

Ball, John, 141. 

Ballot development in England, 537 a, 
546. 

Bannockburn, battle of, 139 note 2. 

Barbarian Invasions, 11 ; Hunga- 
rian, 12; Norse, 13-16; results of, 
in 9th century, 17; Tartars, 168; 
Turks, 169. 

Barbarossa, see Frederick I, Em- 
peror. 

Bastille (bas-tel'), fall of, 316, 317, 
334 note. 

Bavaria, 45, 369; wars of French 
Revolution, 356; made a kingdom, 
370; after Congress of Vienna, 377 
h; Constitution, 388; in 1848, 455; 
Peace of Prague, 468. 



INDEX. 



639 



References are 1o sections. 



Beaumont (bo'mont) , 199. 
Bebel (ba'bel), 485. 
Belg'mm (part of Netherlands), 162, 
172 uote ; separated from the inde- 
pendent United Provinces and re- 
conquered by Spain {Spanish 
Netherlands), 222 note; seized by 
Louis XIV, 259; becomes Austrian 
Netherlands, 2G1 ; invaded by 
French, 334, 337, 340; annexed by 
France, 350, 357, 372; annexed to 
Holland, 377 &, 385; independent 
after revolution of 1873, 391, 392, 
400, 401, 506 ; socialism in, 445 note ; 
in the 19th century, 505-509; and 
Congo Free State, 586. 
Bellini (bel-le'ne), the, 193. 
Benedictine Rule, the, 58; restored, 

59. 
Beneflcium, 24. 
" Benefit of Clerg-y," 69. 
Benevolences, 241. 
" Benevolent despots," 280. 
Berlin, March Rising of 1848, 454; 
Congress of, 1878, p. 405 note, 547, 
577 ; 1884, 586. 
Bernard of Clairvaux (klar-v6') , 72 
note; preaches second Crusade, 96. 
Bible, the, Wyclif's, p. 156 note, 188; 
translated by Laurentius Valla, 
195 ; by Erasmus, 195 ; by Luther, 
207 ; use of English, in churches, 218. 
Bills, in Parliament, origin, 143. 
Bishop, feudal position, 32, 38; duties 

of, 72 ; in English shire, 119. 
Bismarck, 74 note, 369, 379 note, 
430 c, 434, 459 6, 464; and Landtag, 
465; Schleswig-Holstein War, 466; 
Six Weeks' War, 467; popularity, 
469 ; Franco-Prussian War, 469,470 ; 
effect of his policy, 471 ; dismissed, 
480; kulturkampf, 482; colonial 
policy, 484; and socialism, 485, 486. 
Black Death, the, 1.38, 140. 
Black Hole of Calcutta, the, 277. 
Blanc (blon), Louis, 418 note, 420, 

422 note. 
Blenheim (blgn'im), battle of, 261. 
Blois (blwii), 41. 
Bluch'er, .379. 
Boccaccio (bok-kat'cho), 189. 



Boer War, the, 563. 
Bohemia, 50, 64 c ; fief of Empire, 65 ; 
and Rudolph of Hapsburg, 158 ; an 
electorate, 159; Hussites in, 166, 
p. 183 note 1 ; added to Hapsburg 
realms, 202; Protestantism in, 230; 
Revolution of 1848, 452-454; and 
Austria, 491-493. 
Bologna (bo-lou'ya), 180. 
Boniface VIII, Pope, 163, 164. 
Bordeaux (bor-do'), 14, 342. 
Boroughs, 121; basis of representa- 
tion, 135; parliamentary, 527, 529, 
531 a, 5.34, 536. 
Boulanger (boo-loii-zha') , 444. 
Bourtoons, in France, 203, 226-228, 
375 ; in Italy, 396, 457, 462 ; in Spain, 
201, 261, 393, 397, 495. See France, 
Spain, Italy. 
Bourgeoisie (boor-zhwa-ze'), in 
France, 291, taxation, 295; local 
organization, 317; clash with mob, 
323. See Towns. 
Boxer Rising, 591. 
Boyne, battle of, 549. 
Braddock, 276 note, 282. 
Brahe, Tycho (bra'e), 198. 
Brandenburg, 159, 270; Grand Alli- 
ance, 259; becomes kingdom of 
Prussia, 261 note, 273; accession 
of Hohenzollerns, 271; expansion 
into kingdom of Prussia, 272, 273. 
See Prussia, Germany. 
Brez^ (bra-za'), Marquis de, 315. 
Bruges (Fr. pron. briizh) , 116 h. 
Bru-maire', Revolution of, 355, 357. 
Brunswick, House of, 204 e, 253. 
Bulgaria, 576, 577, 581. 
Bundesrath (bun'des-rat), 474. 
Bunyan, John, 249 note. 
Burgundy, Treaty of Verdmi,8; rise, 
41 ; added to Empire, 64 h ; seized 
by France, 150, 152 h ; in 1500, 170. 
Byzant (biz'sint), 90. 
Byzantine Empire, 53, 90 ; map, 90 ; 
appearance of Turks, 91 ; calls for 
Western aid, 91, 92; and crusades, 
95, 98 ; Turks, 169 ; in 1500, 170. 

Caen (kon), 342. 

Cahiers (ka-ya'), p. 325 note 3. 



640 



INDEX, 



Eeferences are to sections. 



Calais (kii-la') , 139. 
Cal'mar, Union of, 157. 
Calonne (kii-lon')- 309, 310. 
Calvin, John, 199 note, 217. 
Calvinism, 216, 217 ; in England, 218 ; 

in France, 226. See Presbyterians, 

Huguenots. 
Cambon (kon-boiV), 342. 
Campo Formio, Peace of, 351, 356, 

370. 
Canada, 277; France in, 282; Eng- 
• iand in, 544, 556-558, 561-564. 
Canon Law, in the Age of Hilde- 

brand, 69. 
Canton, in France, 447; in Switzer- 
land, 161, 512, 520. 
Cape Colony, 558, 563, 586. 
Capetians, early, 42-44; to 1547, 148. 
Cap-o-dis'tri-as, 582. 
Car-bo-na'ri, 394, 458. 
Carlists, adherents of Carlos, claim- 
ant for the Spanish throne, 496. 
Carlos, claims Spanish throne, 496. 
Carls'bad Decrees, 390, 392. 
Carnot (kiir-uo'), 342. 
Carnot, F. Sadi, 442 note. 
Carolingians, 7, 8, 9; later, 10, 11, 

41 ; in Germany, 45, 47. 
Carrier (ca-re-a'), 344. 
Castelar (kas-ta-liir') ,496 ; President, 

497; in liberal monarchy, 500, 501. 
Castles, medieval, 20, 37; of robber 

knights. 111 note. 
Catherine II of Russia, 269, 278, 

280, .567 b. 
Catherine of Aragon, 218. 
Catherine of Medici (ma'de-che), 

203, 226, 227. 
Cavaig-nac (ka-van-yiik'), 423, 424. 
Cavalier Parliament, 249. 
Cavaliers, 245. 
Cavour (kii-voor'), 459-462. 
Center (party in German Reichstag) , 

the, 482, 487. 
Chamberlain, Joseph, 541, 552. 
Chambord (shoii-bor'), Count of, 437, 

439. 
Champagne (sham-pan', Fr. pron. 

shoii-pan'), 41, 300. 
Champs de Mars (shon-de-mar') , 

"Massacre" of, 323. 



Charlemagne, 1, 4, 6, 7 note, 13, 14, 
p. 52 note 2, 46, 55, 60, 72, 155, 178. 

Charles IV, Emperor, 159, 

Charles V, Emperor (Charles I of 
Spain), p. 127 note 2, 162, 172, 201, 
202 ; in Italy, 173 ; Diet of Worms, 
207 ; Reformation, 209-212 ; in Neth- 
erlands, 221, 225. 

Charles VI, Emperor, 261, 274. 

Charles I of England, 204 h, 237, 
239; early Parliaments of, 240; be- 
nevolences and forced loans, 241 ; 
" No Parliament," 243; Civil War, 
245; executed, 247. 

Charles II of England, 204 &, 247- 
249, 263. 

Charles V of Fran ce, 148, 149, 1 51. 

Charles VI of France, 149, 151. 

Charles VIII of France, 171. 

Charles IX of France, 203; Hugue- 
nots, 226; St. Bartholomew, 227. 

Charles X of France, 404, 408, 409- 
412 ; July Ordinances, 410 ; in Eng- 
land, 419. 

Charles I of Spain, see Charles V, 
Emperor. 

Charles II of Spain, 201, 261. 

Charles III of Spain, 201, 280. 

Charles XII of Sweden, 269. 

Charles Albert, of Sardinia, 453, 459. 

Charles of Anjou in Sicily, 86. 

Charles of Roumania, 578. 

Charles the Bald, 41. 

Charles the Bold, Duke of Bur- 
gundy, 152 6, 161, 162, 170. 

Charles the Fat, 41, 47. 

Charles the Simple, 15, 41, 47. 

Charter of 1814 (France), 402, 403; 
workings of, 404-409; suspended, 
410 ; modified, 413. 

Charters, of towns. 111 ; of Henry I, 
125; Magna Carta, 132; of Univer- 
sities, 180. 

Chartists, in England, 452, 533, 542. 

Chaucer, p. 46 note, 98 note, 188 ; and 
the church, 141, 205. 

China, invaded by Tartars, 168, 197; 
Germany in, 484; Russia in, 5676; 
United States and, 590; partition 
of, 585, 5S8, 589; Boxers, 591, 

Chivalry, 37. 



INDEX. 



641 



References are to sections. 



Christendom, 4; and feudalism, 18; 
a political state, 57 ; supremacy of 
Popes, 87 ; gives way to " Europe," 
117 ; in 1500, 170. 

Christianity, 1; coudition at time of 
Empire, 57 ; conversion of Poles 
and Hungarians, 164 c ; Renaissance 
study of early, 195. 

Christina, Queen Regent of Spain, 
496. 

Church, the, 3, 4, 18; feudalized, 32, 
73 ; in feudal France, 43 6 ; in Ger- 
many, 49 ; and empire, 54, 55 ; bond 
of union for Europe, 57; decline in 
9th and 10th centuries, 58; influ- 
ence of Cluny, 59; reforius of 
Henry III of Germany, 65 h ; de- 
mocracy, 66 note; power, 68; or- 
ganization, 69-72; courts, 69; 
weapons, 70 ; revenues, 71 ; in Eng- 
land, 123 note, 141, 218; character 
at close of Middle Ages, 167; and 
Renaissance, 176, 195; and scholas- 
ticism, 183; Counter-Reformation, 
213-215; in France, 289, 311, 328, 
360 a; Kulturkampf, 443, 482, 501, 
503, 505, 508, 516, 517. See Clergy, 
Holy Roman Empire, Kulturkampf, 
Monasteries, Papacy, Protestant- 
ism, Reformation. 

Church and State in Prance, Civil 
Constitution of the Clergy, 328; 
Concordat of Napoleon, 360 a ; to- 
day, 446. 

Church of England, 204 a, 218, 236, 
242, 243, 249 ; disestablished in Ire- 
land, 546 and note ; attempt at dis- 
establishment in Wales, 553. 

Cinque Ports (sink ports), 108, 113. 

Cis-al'pine Republic, 352. 

Civil Service (English), 5375, 546. 

Civil "War in England, 245. 

Clarendon, Constitutions of, 128, 
163 note. 

ClassiQism, 174. 

Clergy, privilege of trial, 69; reve- 
nues, 71; in English Parliament, 
136; and taxes, 163, 164; in France, 
288, 289; in States General, 313, 
314; in National Assembly, 315; 
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 



328 ; Concordat of Napoleon, 360 a. 
See Church and State in France, 
Kulturkampf, Papacy. 

Clermont, Council of, 93. 

Cluny, 59-61 ; Henry III of Germany 
and, 65 h ; Gregory VII and, 66. 

Code Napoleon, 360 h, 371. 

Colbert (kol-ber'), 258. 

Col'et, John, 195, 205. 

Coligny (ko-leu-ye'), 227. 

College of Cardinals, 67 note 2. 

Cologne (ko-lon'), 14, 112, 159. 

Colonial System, of England, 200, 
251, 261, 275, 277, 282-284, 544, 545, 
656-564, 586-590; of France, 258, 
282, 586-589; of Germany, 484, 586, 
589 ; of Holland, 225, 511 ; of Italy, 
489; of Portugal, 197, 604; of 
Spain, 197, 275, 380 note, 393 note, 
398, 500, 501. 

Columbus, 155, 172 note 3, 197. 

Combat, trial by, 130. 

Commendation, 24. 

Commerce, 3, 197; in Dark Ages, 23; 
of Mohammedans, 89 ; of Byzantine 
Empire, 90; growth as result of 
Crusades, 103; Hanseatic League, 
116 6; in England, 139, 2.34, 235, 
263, 284, 366 ; in Netherlands, 162 ; 
internal, of France, 288 ; of Ger- 
many, 232 6, 484; of Spain, 500; of 
Sweden and Norway, 232 b, 526. 

Committee of Public Safety, in 
French Revolution, 342-.346. 

Common Law (in England) , 128. 

Commons, House of, see Parliament. 

Commonwealth in England, 204 b, 
247. 

Communards, 4.35, 436. 

Commune of 1871, 435^36. 

Commune of Paris, 335, 336, 341, 346, 

Communes, 325, 447. 

Compass, invention of, 186, 196 d. 

Concordat of Napoleon, 360 a, 
446. 

Concordat of Worms, 75. 

Confederacy of the Rhine, in the 
Middle Ages, 108, 116 a. 

Confederation of the Rhine, 370; 
social reforms in, 371. 

Congo Free State, 586. 



642 



INDEX. 



Reference)^ are to sections. 



Congress of Berlin, 1878, p. 405 note, 
547, 577; 1884, 58tt. See Hague Con- 
ference. 

Cong-ress of Laibach, 39G. 

Congress of London, 1853, 466. 

Congress of Miinchengratz, 400. 

Congress of Paris, 429 a, 577, 578. 

Congress of Troppau, 395. 

Congress of Verona, 397. 

Congress of Vienna, 376-380, 381, 
457, 466, 505, 523. 

Conrad the Fianconian, of Ger- 
many, 47, 62. 

Conrad II, 62 c, 64, 129. 

Conrad III, 62 e, 77; and Second 
Crusade, 96. 

Conrad IV, 62 e, 86. 

Conservative Party (English), 541; 
and political reform, 534-536; and 
social reform, 544; and Irish ques- 
tion , 552 ; and progress, 554. 

Constance, Council of, p. 156 note, 
167 ; Peace of, 80. 

Constantine Pal-ge-ol'o-gus, 169. 

Constantino the African, 180 a. 

Constantinople, 90, 91 ; Latin King- 
dom, 98 ; surrender to Turks, 169, 
197; introduces Greek learning, 
179; and Russia, 269, .567, 577. 

Constituent Assembly, 315, 328, 
423. 

Constitution, American States, 519; 
Belgium, 507; Bulgaria, 581; Den- 
mark, 521, 522; France, 1791, 324- 
328, 333-336; of Year I, 339; of 
Year III, 348; of Year VIII, 357, 
362; of Second Republic, 424; 
of Third Republic, 440; Finland, 
573; German States, 388, 454; Ger- 
man Empire, 472-478; Greece, 582; 
Holland, 510; Italy, 488; Japan, 
589; Netherlands, 505; Norway, 
525 ; Portugal, 502, 503 ; Roumania, 
578; Spain, 1812, 393, 495, 496; 
paper constitutions of Spain, 496; 
of Spanish Republic, 497; Spaiu, 
1876, 499; Sweden, 524; Switzer- 
land, 513-519. 

Consulate, French, 355-.363. 

'• Continental System," 366, 373. 

Coote, Sir Eyre, in India, 284. 



Oo-per'ni-cus, 198. 

Copyholders in England, 2-34, 523 a. 
See Freeholders, Land tenure. 

Cor-day', Charlotte, 346 note. 

Cor'd5-va, University of, 179. 

Corneille (kor-nay'), 265. 

Corn Laws, repeal, 544. 

Correggio (kor-ed'jo), 193. 

Cortes, of Portugal, 503; of Spain, 
15(), 393, 495, 497, 499, 501. 

Corvee (kor-va'), 296 6, 307. 

Council of Blood, 221. 

Council of Constance, p. 156 note, 
167. 

Council of Pisa, 167. 

Council of Trent, 205 note, 215. 

Councils of Church, 67 c, 72; of 
Clermont, 93 ; demand for general 
councils, 167 ; Vatican, of 1870, 482. 

Counter-Reformation, 213-215. 

Counties, of England, local govern- 
ment, 538 a, 540. See Shire. 

Courts, feudal, 29; King's Court, 
42 a ; ecclesiastical, 68, 69 ; of gilds, 
69 note; town, in England, 113; 
shire, 119; hundred, 120; Saxon 
feudal, 122; itinerant, 128; Royal, 
of Middle Ages, 129; papal and 
local, 165; of the Stuarts in Eng- 
land, 243, 244; in England, after 
revolution of 1688, 251; of Louis 
XIV, 260; in France to-day, 448; 
ecclesiastical, abolished in France, 
459 note ; in Germany, 479. 

Covenanters, 243, 244. 

Crecy (kres'si ; Fr. kra-see'), 139, 234. 

Crimean War, 429 a, 459 a, 545, 573. 

Croats (kro'ats), 453, 492, 493, 576. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 244-248. 

Crusades, 4 a, 44, 92-105; place in 
history, 92; causes, 93; First, 94, 
95; Second, 79, 96; Third, 97; 
Fourth, 98, 169 ; later, 99 ; why they 
ceased, 100; results of, 101-105, 150. 

Customs Parliament, 469. 

Cus-toz'za, battle of, 453, 454. 

Czechs fchgks), 453, 493. 

Danelagh, 16, 119 note. 
Danes, 13 ; in Normandy, 15 ; in Eng- 
land, 16, See Denmark. 



INDEX. 



643 



References are to sections. 



Danish War, 465, 466. See Scliles- 

wig-Holstein Question. 
Dante (dau'te; It. pron. dan'ta), 54, 

85, 189, 457. 
Danton (doii-tou ') , 332, 335, 338, 341, 

346. 
"Dark Ages," 4; studies in, 178. 
Declaration of Independence of 

United States, 303 note. 
Declaration of Rights, English, 250. 
Democracy, growtli of, 303, 385. 
Denmark, 16, 18, 50; dissolution of 

Empire, 64 ; Union of Calmar, 157 ; 

in 1500, 170 ; and Protestant cause in 

Germany, 230 ; Napoleonic wars, 366, 

372 ; after Congress of Vienna, 377c ; 

Revolution of 1848, 452 ; Schleswig- 

Holstein affair, 466; to 1866, 521; 

Constitution and politics, 522. 
Derby (dar'by). Lord, 534, 641. 
Desmoulins (da-moo-lan'), Camille, 

316, 346. 
Despotism, reforms by, 200, 279, 280; 

in Europe, 400; in England, 200, 

237; in France, 301, 307, 358, 362, 

367, 427, 428 ; in Germany, 382, 479 ; 

in Italy, 457; in Russia, 568, 573. 

See Absolute Monarchy. 
Diaz (de'as), Bartholomew, 197. 
Diderot (de-dro'), 302. 
Diet, of Empire, in 1347, 159; of 

Worms, 207, 209 ; of Speier, 210 ; of 

Augsburg, 210; of Switzerland, 513, 

517, 518; of Denmark, 621; of 

Sweden, 524. See Rigsdag. 
Directory, French, 348-355. 
Disestablishment of English Church, 

in Ireland, 546 and note ; proposed 

in Wales, 553. 
DisraeU (diz-ra'li), 535, 641, 547. 
Doff ing-en, battle of, 116 a. 
Domain, feudal, 26; in France, 292- 

294, 318. 
Domesday Book, 125 note 130. 
D6-min'I-'cans, 84, p. 332 note. 
Dreyfus (dri'fus; Fr. pron. dra-fiis'), 

443 note ; 446. 
■' Duchy of Athens," 98. 
Dukes of Prancia, 41, 42, 43. 
Duma (dooma), 575. 
Dumouriez (d"ii-moo-re-a'), 340, 342. 



Dupleix (dii-pla'), 275, 277. 
Diirer, Albert, 193. 
Du-shan', Stephen, 169. 
Dutch Republic, see Netherlands. 

Ealdorman (el'der-man) , 119. 

East, the, in history, 1, 2. See Oriental 
Civilization, China, Asia. 

Eastern Empire, see Byzantine. 

" Eastern Question," 577. 

East Indies, 220. 

Economic Conditions, in feudal 
times, 23; in Belgium, 509; in Eng- 
land, 234, 235, 239 note, 528, 530, 
533, 534, 543; in France, 260 b, 264, 
428, 450 ; in Germany, 231, 279, 484; 
in Holland, 511; in Italy, 488; in 
Norway, 526; in Portugal, 504; 
in Spain, 501; in Sweden, 526; in 
Switzerland, 520. 

Education, 3, 4; in Alfred's Eng- 
land, 16; of Mohammedans, 89; 
in Dark Ages, 178; Universities, 
178-181; affected by Renaissance, 
191; in Belgium, 508; in England, 
542, 545, 546; "benevolent des- 
pots" and, 280; in France, 345, 
346 note 3, 359, 415 note, 428, 44^7 
- 449; in Germany, 482; in Holland, 
510; in Italy, 488; in Portugal, 
503; in Spain, 500, 501 ; in Switzer- 
land, 520. See Kulturkampf. 

Ed-ward I of England, 135, 137, 164. 

Ed-ward II of England, 137. 

Ed-ward III of England, 138, 139, 
140; Parliament, 143; and French 
crown, 148 note; and Papacy, 165. 

Ed-ward IV of England, 146, 233 
note, 235. 

Ed-ward V of England, 146. 

Ed-ward VI of England, 204 a, 218, 
2.34. 

Ed-ward VII of England, 204 e. 

Ed-ward the Confessor, 16. 

Egbert, King of Wessex, 16. 

Egypt, Crusades in, 99; Napoleon in, 
354 ; England in, 557, 560. 

Eleanor, Queen of England, 127, 
p. 164 note. 

Electoral College (Holy Roman 
Empire), 62 note, 159, 270. 



644 



INDEX. 



References are to sections. 



Eliot, Sir John, 240, 242. 

Elizabeth of England, 199, 204 a, 
233, 281 ; ecclesiastical system, 218 ; 
aids Netherlands, 223; Puritans, 
236 ; Parliament, 237 ; Ireland, 549. 

Elizabeth of Russia, 269. 

Emigrants, French, 320, 328, 331, 
335, 359 note, 378, 404, 408. 

Emmet, Robert, 551. 

Empire, French, First, 362-375; Sec- 
ond, 427-432. 

Empire of Charlemagne, 6, 7, 41 ; 
attempts to revive, 46, 51 ; more 
universal than Holy Koman Em- 
pire, 55 6. See Holy Roman Empire. 

Enclosures, see Inclosures. 

England, Danish invasions, 16; be- 
ginning of nation, 18, 55 h, 64 a ; 
and Roman Church, 82, 87, 163- 
166; growth of towns, 108, 110, 
111, 113, 163, 166; to 1500, 118- 
147, 170; Saxon institutions, 118- 
122; Norman period, 123-125; 
effect of Conquest, 123; early 
Plantagenets, 126-137 ; territories 
of Plantagenets, 127; Magna Carta, 
132; Parliament, 134-136, 143, 144; 
Hundred Years' War, 139; Black 
Death, 140; social discontent, 141, 
234, 528 a, 533; Peasant Rising, 
142 ; alliance with Netherlands, 
162; learning in Dark Ages, 178; 
early literature, 188; Renaissance, 
199; Stuarts and Parliament, 200, 
240-244; struggle with France 
for world-empire, 200, 261, 274- 
277, 282; table of Kings, 204; 
Protestantism in, 218; develop- 
ment of political liberty, 219, 2.33- 
254 ; aids Netherlands, 223 ; in 17th 
century, 2.33-254; Yorkist and 
Tudor periods, 233-235 ; condition 
under early Stuarts, 236-244; Civil 
War and the Commonwealth, 245- 
248; Restoration and the Revolu- 
tion, 249, 250; foreign expansion 
and growth of Parliament, 251- 
254; ministerial government, 252; 
war with Louis XIV, 259, 261 ; ex- 
pansion, 281-284; wars of French 
Revolution, 340, 343, 350, 354-356; 



wars with Napoleon, 364-366, 372, 
374, 375, 379, 457, 529; Congress of 
Vienna, 376, .377, 380, 457 ; reaction 
in, 382; Congress of Troppau, .395; 
Congress of Verona, 397 ; and Holy 
Alliance, 398^00; aids Greece, 399; 
Crimean War, 429 a, 459 a; Ameri- 
can Civil War, 430 h ; Chartists, 452, 
533, 542 ; in China, 484 ; in 19th cen- 
tury, 527-564; in 1815, 527-528; 
political reform, 529-540; in cen- 
tral government, 529-537 ; in local 
government, 538, 540; social re- 
form to 1884, 541-548 ; Irish Ques- 
tion, 549-552; politics, in the 20th 
century, 553-555; colonies and de- 
pendencies, 556-564, 585-590; and 
the alliances of the new age, 584. 

E-ras'mus, 195, 205, 215 note. 

Espartero (es-par-ta'ro), 496. 

Estates General, French, 154; and 
Papacy, 164. See States General. 

Eth'el-red the Rede'less, 16. 

Eves'ham, battle of, 133. 

Excommunication, 68, 70 ; used by 
Gregory VII, 74; of Henry IV of 
Germany, 74; of Frederick II, 86; 
in England, p. 137 note. 

Factory Legislation, in England, 
542, 543, .545, 546. 

Factory System, 528 h, 543. 

Pa-sh5'da Incident, 587. 

Faure (for), Felix, 442 note. 

February Days in Paris, 419, 452. 

Federal Act of 1815, Germany, .387. 

Federal Assembly of Switzer- 
land, 518. 

Federal Pact of 1815, in Switzer- 
land, 514. 

Fenians, 552. 

Ferdinand I, Emperor, 202, 212, 
230 note. 

Ferdinand of Aragon,. king of 
Spain, 155, 1.56; in Sicily, 171; 
power of Spain, 172. 

Ferdinand VII of Spain, 393, 397, 
495, 496. 

Ferdinand I of Austria, 453. 

Ferdinand of Bulgaria, 581. 

Ferdinand of Naples, 280. 



INDEX. 



645 



References are to sections. 



Festival of Reason, 3i6. 

Feudalism, 3, 18-40 ; origin, 19 ; 
classes, 21, 26, 34; privileges, 21, 
22; causes, 23, 24; theory and 
practice, 25; feudal contract, 27; 
lord and vassal, 28-31 ; aids, 30 ; 
in the church, 32, 73; violence, 33; 
society, 34-37 ; economic effects, 
36; and chivalry, 37; in France, 
42; in Germany, 48; organization 
under Otto the Great, 49; under- 
mined by the Crusades, 105; and 
civilization, 106; undermined hy 
cities, i08; Anglo-Saxon, 122; in 
England, 124, 125; in France, 153, 
292-294, 302, 318; in Spain, 156; 
in Scandinavia, 157 ; in Confeder- 
acy of the Rhine, 371; in Italy and 
Germany, 452, 456 ; in Austria, 491 ; 
in Denmark, 521. 

Fiefs, 21, 26. 

Fine Arts, medieval, 192; in Renais- 
sance, 193-194. 

Finland, seized toy Russia, 269, 567 h, 
574; Napoleon, 373; after Congress 
of Vienna, 377 c ; loss of liberties, 
573 ; recovery, 573, close. 

" Fist-law " in Germany, 88. 

Flanders, 41, 139, 152 6, 162, 235. 

Florence, 114, 171; and Renaissance, 
193 ; in 1848, 453. 

Forest Cantons, 161, 512 note, 516 
note. See Switzerland. 

For'tes-cue, Sir John, 144, 234. 

Fourth of August Decrees, 318. 

France, beginnings, 8, 18; from Ver- 
dun to the 12th century, 41-44 ; not 
part of Empire, 55 ; and Innocent 
III, 82 ; rebels against papal domi- 
nation, 87, 163-165 ; population, p. 
106 note 1 ; towns, 108-111, 115 ; and 
Henry II of England, 127 ; royal jus- 
tice, 129 ; regains Normandy, 131 ; 
Hundred Years' War, 1.38-139; to 
1547, 148-154; in 1500, 170; early 
literature, 188; predominance, 200; 
kings, 203 ; Protestantism, 211, 212 ; 
religious wars, 219, 226-229 ; Thirty 
Years' War, 2.30 ; Treaty of West- 
phalia, 232 6, 255 ; disturbs balance 
of power, 255; Age of Louis XIV, 



258-265; war in America, 275, 277-, 
War of Austrian Succession, 274; 
Seven Years' War, 276; Revolu- 
tion, 285-375; conditions in 1789, 
288-312; 1st period of Revolution, 
313-332 ; 2d period of Revolution, 
333-347; 3d period of Revolution, 
348-355; Consulate and Empire, 
356-375; return of Napoleon, 378, 
379; after Congress of Vienna, 380 ; 
Reaction, 381, 382, 408; Revolution 
of 1830, 385, 391, 392, 410-412 ; Con- 
gress of Troppau, 395; in Greece, 
399; since 1815, 402^51; Divine 
Right Monarchy, 402-409; Consti- 
tutional Monarchy, 413-418; Revo- 
lution of 1848, 417, 419-423, 452; 
Second Republic, 424^26; Second 
Empire, 427-432; Franco-Prussian 
War, 432-434, 465, 469, 470 ; Third 
Republic, 433-451; Foreign and 
Civil War, 433-436 ; Republic es- 
tablished, 437-442; Kulturkampf, 
443; Boulanger, 444; to-day, 445- 
451; in Italy, 459; China, 484 ; Bel- 
gium, 509 ; alliances of new age, 583- 
584 ; Africa, 586, 587 ; Asia, 588, 589. 

Franchise, in Belgium, 507-508; in 
Denmark, 522; in England, 527, 
529, 5316, 533-535; in France, 357, 
409, 413, 416, 417, 421, 424, 434, 
440; in Germany, 454, 475, 485; 
in Greece, 582; in Holland, 510; 
in Italy, 488; in Norway, 525; in 
Portugal, 503; in Roumania, 578; 
in Spain, 500, 501; in Sweden, 524. 

Francia, 41, 42, 43. 

Franciscans, the, 84. 

Francis I, Emperor, 202, 274. 

Francis II, Emperor, 331. 

Francis I of France, 172, 203; iu 
Italy, 173, 209 ; patron of art, 193 ; 
Huguenots, 226. 

Francis II of France, 203, 226. 

Francis Joseph I, of Austria, 453. 

Francis of Assisi, 84. 

Franconia, 45, 47, 62, 77. 

Franco-Prussian War, 427, 432-434, 
465, 469-470. 

Frankfort, 107, 387 ; and Prussia, 468 
a ; National Assembly, 452, 454, 455. 



646 



INDEX. 



References are to sections. 



Frederick I (Barbarossa), Emperor, 
G2, 75 note; Lombard League, 79- 
81, 108; character and policy, 79; 
place in history, 81 ; Third Crusade, 
97; University of Bologna, 180 &. 

Frederick 11, Emperor, 62, 82; 
character, 85-86; recovers Jerusa- 
lem, 99; and Swiss League, 161 
note ; and Popes, 163 ; and Tartars, 
168; University of Naples, 180 a. 

Frederick III, Emperor, 160. 

Frederick I of Prussia, 273. 

Frederick II of Prussia (the 
Great), 200, 256, 274-276, 278-280; 
greatness of, 279, 280. 

Frederick III of Prussia, 480. 

Frederick of Hohenzollern, 271. 

Frederick William, " Great Elector " 
of Brandenburg, 273, 279. 

Frederick William I, Prussia, 274. 

Frederick William III, 382, 388, 
395 note. 

Frederick William IV, 454. 4,55, 464. 

Freeholders in England, 234, 528 a. 

Free Trade in England, 544, 545. 

French and Indian War, 277. 

French Revolution of 1789, 4 h, 
203, 285-376; character, 285-287; 
causes, 288-304 ; feudal burdens, 
292-294; taxation, 295-297; govern- 
ment, 298-301 ; men of letters, 302- 
304 ; attempted reforms, Louis XVI, 
305-310; 1st period, 313-332; Con- 
stituent Assembly, at Versailles, 
313-319; at Paris, 320-323; March 
of the Women, 320 ; Constitution of 
1791, 324-328; Legislative Assem- 
bly and foreign war, 329-332; 2d 
period, 333-347 ; breakdown of con- 
stitution, 333-336; converts with 
sword, 337 ; Convention and revo- 
lutionary government, 338-347; 3d 
period, -348-355; results, 385. 

French Revolution, Second, 391, 
400, 410-412. 

French Revolution, Third, 417, 419- 
423, 452 ; Commune of 1871, 4.35-436. 
See Napoleon, Consulate, Empire. 

Friars, 82, 84. 

Froissart (froiss'art), 141. 

Fronde, 258. 



Ga-belle', 297, 302. 

Gal-i-le'o, 198. 

Gam-bett'a (Fr. pron. gdn-b§h-ta'), 
433, 441, 443. 

Game Laws, feudal, 21; in France, 
294; abolished, 318. 

Gar-i-bal'di (It. gil-re-bal'de), 462. 

Genghis Khan (jen'gis kiin), 168. 

Genoa, and commerce, 103; Ligurian 
Republic, 352; after Congress of 
Vienna, 377 &, 380, 457; Garibaldi 
sails from, 462. 

Geoffrey Plantagenet, 126. 

George I of England, 204 e, 252. 

George II, 204 e, 252. 

George III, 204 e, 529. 

George IV, 204 e, 531. 

George of Greece, 582. 

Gerbert, Pope, 63. 

Germanic Confederation of 1815, 
387. 

Germany, beginning, 8, 18 ; from Ver- 
dun to restoration of the Empire, 
45-51 ; and Holy Roman Empire, 52- 
88 ; kings, 62 ; under Otto II and III, 
63; restored strength, 64; small 
scattered units, 64; reaches highest 
point under Henry III, 65; Henry 
IV, 74; feudal anarchy, 76; peace 
and order under Frederick I, 79; 
separation from Italy, 86; eiTects 
of struggle between Empire and 
Papacy on, 88 ; towns, 108, 110, 111, 
116; royal justice, 129; from Great 
Interregnum to Charles V, 158-160; 
and Papacy, 165 ; in 1.500, 170 ; early 
literature, 188 ; Reformation in, 205- 
212, 215, 219; Thirty Years' War in, 
230-232; wars of French Revolu- 
tion, 337, 351; Napoleon, 368-371, 
374, 380 ; after Congress of Vienna, 
377 a; New Germany, 385; Metter- 
nich in, 386,387-392; Revolution of 
1830, 391 ; and Napoleon III, 430 c; 
Socialists in, 445 note, 481 note, 
482, 485, 486 ; in 1848, 452, 454-456 ; 
unification of, 464^71; since 1871, 
472-487; Constitution, 472-478; op- 
eration of, 479-481 ; kulturkampf, 
482; militarism, 483; trade and 
colonies, 484; and Sweden and Nor- 



INDEX. 



647 



References are to sections. 



way, 525 and note ; a world power, 
583'; in Africa, 586; in Asia, 589. 
See Holy Roman Empire, Prussia. 

Ghibelline (glb'el-len), 77, 82, 86. 

Gibraltar, 261, 28i, 501, 557, 558. 

Gilds, 69 note, 108, 112; and uni- 
versity organizations, 179 note 3; 
breaking down, 235 ; in France, 290, 
307. 

Giotto (jot'to), 193. 

Girondists, 330, 332, 335 ; in conven- 
tion, 338; fall, 31:1; fugitive, 342, 
317 ; Lamartiue and, 415 note. 

Gladstone, p. 548 notes, 534-536, 540, 
541, 546-548, 552, 553, 560, 563. 

Golden Bull, the, 159. 

Golden Horde, the, 168. 

Good Parliament, the, 143. 

Gra-na'da, 155, 197. 

Grand Remonstrance, of Long Par- 
liament, 244. 

Great Council, of Norman kings, 134. 

Great Privilege, Netherlands, 162. 

Greece, 385, 394, 399, 458, 576, 577, 582. 

Greek Church, in Russia, 266. 

Greek Civilization, 1, 3; among the 
Mohammedans, 89 ; influence on lit- 
erature, 189-191. 

Gregory V, Pope, 63. 

Gregory VII, youth, 66; work as 
counsellor, 67; policy, 68; legates, 
72; investitures, 74; and Henry IV 
of Germany, 74, 75, 93 ; and William 
the Conqueror, 123. 

Gregory XI, 166. 

Grevy (gra-ve'), 441, 442. 

Guelf, 77, 82. See Welfs. 

Guiana (ge-a'na), 451. 

Guise (giiez). House of, 226-228. 

Guizot (ge-z6'), 408, 415-417, 419. 

Gunpowder, invention of, 186, 196 a. 

Gustavus Adolphus, 230. 

Gustavus Vasa (va'sJi), 157. 

Gutenberg (goot'en-bera) , 196 h. 

Habeas Corpus Act, 249. 
Hague (hag) Conference, 380, 594. 
Ham'burg (Ger. pron. ham'booro), 

14, 116 h. 
Hampden, John, 241, 243, 244, p. 247 
note. 



Han-o-ver'i-ans, 204 e, 253. 

Han'se-at'ic League, 108, 116 &, 162. 

Hapsburgs (hiips'booras), 158, 160; 
Counts in Switzerland, 161 ; Charles 
V, 172; last of Spanish, 201, 261; 
and Protestantism, 230 ; wars, 259, 
261, 262; and France, 264. 

Harold Blue-Tooth, 50. 

Harold the Saxon, 16. 

Harvey, William, 199. 

Hastings, battle of, 16 d. 

Hawaii (hil-wi'e) , 590. 

Hebert (a-ber'). 346. 

Heidelberg (hi'del-bera), 454 note. 

Heimskringla (hims'kring-la), 188. 

Henry I of England, 75 note, 125, 
183. 

Henry II of England, 126; terri- 
tories, 127, 151; and courts, 128; 
jury, 130; Great Council, 134; Con- 
stitutions of Clarendon, 163 note; 
and Ireland, 549. 

Henry III of England, 133, 139. 

Henry IV of England, 138 ; Lollards, 
141 note; Parliament, 143. 

Henry V of England, 1,38, 139; 
Lollards, 141 note ; Parliament, 
143; France, 151 and note. 

Henry VI of England, 138, 139, 145, 
151. 

Henry VII of England, 146, 147, 197. 

Henry VIII of England, 147, 172, 
204 rt; the Church, 218, p. 257 note 
2 ; popular risings, 234 ; and Par- 
liament, 237, and Ireland, 549. 

Henry II of France, 203, 212, 229; 
Huguenots, 226. 

Henry III of Prance, 203, 226, 228. 

Henry IV of France (of Navarre), 
227, 228, 237. 

Henry I of Germany, 47, 48, 49, 62, 
110; repulse of Hungarians, 48. 

Henry II of Germany, 62, 64. 

Henry III of Germany, 62; refor- 
mation of church and state, 65. 

Henry IV of Germany, 62 ; opponent 
of Gregory VII, 74, 75. 

Henry V of Germany, 62; and in- 
vestitures, 73 note 4, 75. 

Henry VI of Germany, 62, 82. 

Henry the Navigator, 197. 



648 



INDEX. 



References are to sections. 



Herzegovina (hert-se-go-ve'na), 577. 

Hesse, 455, 468 a. 

Hesse-Darmstadt (h&-darm'stat), 
468 6. 

Hierarchy, in the church, 68, 72. 

Hildebrand, see Gregory VII. 

Hohenlinden (ho-en-lin'den), battle 
of, 356. 

Hohenstaufen (ho-en-stauf'en), 62, 
77-88; origin, 77; fall, 86, 158. 

Hohenzollerns (ho - en - tsol ' lerns) , 
271-273. 

Holbein (hol'bin), 193. 

Holland, 162; in 1500, 170; art in, 
193; independence, 224, 232 6 ; pros- 
perity, 225; wars with Louis XIV, 
259, 261 ; decline of commerce in, 
263; wars of French Revolution in, 
340; conquered by France, 350, 
368 a; after Congress of Vienna, 
377 6; Revolution of 1830, 391; 
Revolution of 1848, 452 ; in 19th cen- 
tury, 505, 506, 510, 511. See Neth- 
erlands. 

Holies (hol'lgs) , 244. 

Holstein (hol'stin), 466. 

Holy Alliance, the, 395-398, 400, 408, 
458, 495. 

Holy Roman Empire, 52-88; resto- 
ration, 53 ; results of restoration , 54 ; 
nature, 55 ; coronation of Emperor, 
56 ; relations with Popes, 61 ; re- 
stored strength, 63 ; addition of Bur- 
gundy, 64 6 ; eastern kingdoms, 64 c ; 
Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia, 65 
a ; conflict with Popes over investi- 
tures, 73-76; compromise, 75; the 
Hohenstaufen, 77-88; Italian pol- 
icy, 78; conflict over Italy, 78-88; 
Interregnum, 86; results of strug- 
gle, 87; growth of towns, 108, 11(3; 
from Interregnum to Charles V, 
158-160; position in 1500, 170,; table 
of Emperors, 202 ; Austrian House, 
262 ; composition before Napoleon, 
369 ; close, 370. 

Holy Velime (vam) , 129 note. 

Home Rule in Ireland, 552. 

Hos'pl-tal-lers, see Knights of St. 
John. 

Hugh Capet (ka-pa'), 41, 42, 148. 



Huguenots (hu'ge-nots), 226-229; 
condition in France, 226; St. Bar- 
tholomew, 227; Edict of Nantes, 
203, 228 ; edict revoked, 260 h ; po- 
litical power crushed, 229; in Eng- 
land, 235; in Brandenburg, 273; 
immigration to America, 282. 

Humanism, 189-191, 196 6; in the 
Reformation, 205 note. 

Hundred, the, in Saxon England, 
118-121. 

Hundred Days, in French Revolu- 
tion, 379. 

Hundred Years' War, 139; effect 
on France, 150, 151 ; and Nether- 
lands, 162; and Papacy, 163. 

Hundred Years' War, Second, 261, 
275-279, 283, 284. -^ 

Hungarians, 11, 12; repulse by 
Henry I of Germany, 48 ; conquered, 
by Otto 1, 49 ; organized state, 64 c. 
See Hungary. 

Hungary, 55 ; fief of Empire, 65 a ; 
ravaged by Tartars, 168, 170 ; won 
back from Turks by Austria, 262; 
war of 1848, 452, 453, 455, 456, 459 a ; 
Austria-Hungary, 491-493. See 
Austria. 

Huss, John, 166, 167, 181 note 4. 

Inclosures in England, 234, 528 a. 

India, invaded by Tartars, 168; at- 
tempts to reach from the West, 
197; Dupleix in, 275; Coote in, 
284; England, 547, 557, 559, 588. 

Indulgences, 205, 206. 

Industrial Revolution in England, 
528 h. 

Industry, of Mohammedans, 89; in 
English towus, 113, 235 ; of France, 
228, 260 6, 264; destroyed in Ger- 
many by Thirty Years' War, 231 ; 
in Prussia, 273, 279; encouraged in 
France, 359, 428; in Germany, 484; 
in Italy, 488; in Spain-, 500; in 
England, 528 ; of 20th century, 593. 

Innocent II, Pope, 75 note. 

Innocent III, 72 note, 82; and Albi- 
genses, 83; and friars, 84; death, 
86 ; and John of England, 131. 

Innocent IV, 86. 



INDEX. 



649 



Eeferences are to sections. 



Inquisition, 213, 214 ; in Netherlands, 
221 ; restored in Pupal States, 381. 

Intendants, 298, 300. 

Interdict, (58, 70. 

Interregnum, the Great, in Ger- 
many, 88, 158. 

Inventions, 4, 196 ; in England, 528 b ; 
in new age, 592, 593. 

Investitures, 27, 73; cause of con- 
flict, 74. 

Ireland, 127; Strafford in, 243, 549; 
massacre in, 244; Cromwell in, 248, 
549; conquest by England, 281, 
344; threat of rebellion, 452; in 
Parliament, 527; reform, 542, 546- 
548; famine, 544; Ireland to 1700, 
549; in the ISth century, 550; 
'* union " with England, 551; since 
1830, 552. 

Irish Famine, 544. 

Ir-ne'ri-us, 180 h. 

Ironsides, Cromwell's, 234, 245. 

Isabella of Castile, 155, 197. 

Isabella of Spain, 496. 

Isle of France, 149. 

Italy, at Treaty of Verdun, 8, 18; 
German conquest, 51; disintegra- 
tion, 53 ; Holy Roman Empire, 53- 
88 ; effect on Italy, 54 ; conflict of 
policies, 78; Peace of Constance, 
80; union of South, with Empire, 
82; in 1500, 170; Frederick II, 86; 
separation from Germany, 86; re- 
sults on, of struggles between Em- 
pire and Papacy, 87; growth of 
towns, 108, 109, 114 ; anarchy, 165 ; 
movement toward unity, 171; Re- 
naissance in, 174, 176, 179, 189, 193, 
209 note; inquisition in, 214; Na- 
poleon in, 351, 352, 356, 368 h, 372, 
380; after Congress of Vienna, 
377 a; Revolution of 1830, 391, 392, 
400 ; War of Napoleon III for, 429 h, 
430 a; Socialism in, 445, note; 
Revolution of 1848, 452-456; unifi- 
cation of, 457-463 ; since 1870, 488- 
490; alliances of the new age, 
583-584. See Holy Roman Empire, 
Sardinia. 

Ivan (e-van') the Great, 170. 

Ivan the Terrible, 170, fi67 a. 



Jac'6-blns, 321, 329, 330, 332, 334r-336, 
341, 346, 347. 

Jacquerie (zhak-re'), 142, p. 166 
note 1. 

James I of England, 204 b, 236, 237, 
281 «. 

James II of England, 204 b, 237, 249. 

Jan'is-sa-ries, 169. 

Japan, 197, 5S4 6, 589-591. 

Jax-ar'tes, 89, 91, 169. 

Jemmapes (zha-map'), 337. 

Jena (ya'nii), battle of, 365, 370, 371, 
379, 464 ; University of, 389. 

Jerome of Prague, 167. 

Jerusalem, captured by Turks, 93, 
99; in the Crusades, 94, 97, 99; 
Crimean War, 429 a. 

Jesuits, 84, 215, 443, 482, 517. 

Jews, 104 note; persecution, 214; 
in France, 446 ; in Russia, 566, 573. 

Jingoism, 547. 

Joanna of Spain, 162. 

Jo-an' of Arc, 151. 

John of England, 82, 131, 134, 139, 
151. 

John of Portugal, 502. 

John So-bi-es'ki, of Poland, 257. 

John XII, Pope, 60. 

Joinville (zhwaii-vel'), extracts from 
Memoir of St. Louis, 22 note, 40, 
100, 129. 

Joseph II, Emperor, 202, 280. 

Josephine, Empress, 367, note. 

July Days (in Paris), 412, 458. 

JLily Ordinances, 410, 411. 

June Days (in Paris) , 423, 454. 

Jury, 130, 144; established in France, 
324; in Germany, 481; in Spain, 
500 ; in Russia, 573. 

Justice, in feudal courts, 25, 29, .33 ; 
in feudal France, 42a; royal jus- 
tice, in the Middle Ages, 129; in 
France, 299, 359, 448; in Confeder- 
ation of the Rhine, 371 ; in German 
Empire, 479 ; in England, 128, 629, 
542 ; in Russia, 668, 573. 

Kas-so'va, battle of, 169. 
Kepler, 198. 

Kett's Rising, p. 257 note 2. 
Kief (ke-gf), 108. 



650 INDEX. 

References are to sections. 



Kingdom of Jerusalem, 95. 
King- William's War, 261. 
Knig-hts, 20, 37; Chaucer's, p. 46 

uote; of the shire, 128 note 2, 136; 

robber knights, p. 123 note, 158. 
Knights of St. John, 95, 99, 224. 
Knox, John, 236. 
Knut the Great, 16, 64, 157. 
Kdniggratz (ko'neo-rets), Sadowa. 
Korea, 589, 591. 
Kos-gi-us'ko, 278. 
Kossuth (kosh'oot), 453. 
Kot'ze-bue, 389, 395. 
Kulturkampf , Belgium, 508 ; France, 

443, 446: Germany, 482; Holland, 

510; Spain, 501; Portugal, 503. 
Kyffhauser (kif'hoi-zer) Mountain, 

81. 

Labor, feudal, 34; change in char- 
acter, 107; social discontent in 
England, 140-142, 234, 528, 530, 533, 
534, 543, 554; in France, 290, 359, 
418; beginnings of socialism, 418; 
troubles in Belgium, 508. See Fac- 
tory legislation, Factory system. 
Industrial Revolution, Industry, 
Serfs. 

Labor Unions, 528 6, 546. 

Lafayette (la-fa-yef), in America, 
308 note ; in Assembly of Notables, 
310; National Guards, 317, 320; in 
Assembly, 321, 322 ; foreign war, 
330, 332, 334, 335; succeeded by 
Dumouriez, 340; in legislature of 
the restored Monarchy, 407 ; Revo- 
lution of 1830, 411, 412. 

Laitaach (li'baeh). Congress of, 396. 

Lamartine (la-mar-ten'), 415 and 
note, 420, 421, 423, 424. 

Lancastrians, 138, 143; Wars, 145, 
147, 2.33 ; and Lollards, 166. 

Landtag- (lant'taa), 454, 464, 465, 
469, 478. 

Land Tenure, feudal, 26, 34; in 
France, 292, 293, 328, 359, 450; in 
Prussia, 371 ; in England, 234, 528 a, 
554; in Russia, 569. See Copy- 
holders, Freeholders, Serfs. 

LangLiedoc(iang'gwe-dok), 83, 188, 
300. 



La Rochelle (la ro-shgl'), 229. 

La Salle (la sal), 282. 

Lassalle (la-sal') , 485. 

Lateran Council, 130. 

Latimer, execution of, 218. 

Latin States of Syria, established, 
95, 96 ; effect on European com- 
merce, 103. 

Laud, William, 243, 244. 

Lechfeld (lech'felt), battle of, 49. 

Leg-ates, Papal, 72. 

Legnano (lan-ya'n5) , battle of, 80, 81. 

Leipzig (lip'tsiG), battle of, 374, 384, 
389. 

Leo IX, Pope, 65 c. 

Leo X, 206, 207. 

Leo XIII, 443. 

Leonardo da Vinci (la-o-nar'do da 
vin'che), 193. 

Leopold of Coburg, King of Bel- 
gium, 506, 582. 

Leopold II, 507, 586. 

Leopold II, Emperor, 202, 331. 

Leopold of Tuscany, 280. 

Le-pan'to, battle of, 224. 

Letters of the Seal {Lettres cle 
Cachet, Fr. pron. let'r-de-ka-sha) , 
299, 302. 

Leuthen (loi'ten), battle of, 276. 

Lewes (lu'es), battle of, 133, 134. 

Lewis the Child, 47. 

Leyden (li'den) , relief of, 222 ; Uni- 
versity of, 222 note 2; Puritans at, 
236. 

Liberal party (English), the, politi- 
cal reform, 534, 535 ; table of ad- 
ministrations, 541 ; social reform, 
542-544; and Ireland, 552; and 
progress, 554. 

Liebknecht (lep'knecht), 485. 

Liege (lege), see Suzerain. 

Ligurian Republic, 352, 

Limerick, treaty of, 549. 

Literature, medieval, 187-188; re- 
naissance, 18t)-191; in England, 
187, 199, 249, 265 note ; in France, 
265, 302-304; in Prussia, 279. 

Lollards, 141, 166. 

Lombard League, 80, 108, 114. 

Long Parliament, 243; and Civil 
War, 245. 



INDEX. 



651 



References are to sections. 



Long-wy (loii-ve), 336. 

Lorraine (lor-ran'), 292, 379 note, 434, 
583. 

Lothair I, 8. 

Lotbair II, 62, p. 84 note. 

Lotharingia, 8, 9, 45 ; added to Ger- 
many, 48. See Lorraine. 

Loubet (l6o-ba'), lllmile, 442 note. 

Louis the Pious, 7. 

Louis tlie Stammerer, p. 51 note. 

Louis III, p. 51 note. 

Louis VI, 148, 149. 

Louis VII, 96, 127, 148. 

Louis VIII, 148, 153. 

Louis IX (St. Louis), 22 note, 40, 99, 
100, 129, 149, 153, 197. 

Louis XI, 148, 149, 152 b, 153, 162. 

Louis XIII, 203, 229. 

Louis XIV, 200, 203, 249, 251, 256, 273, 
282, 301; age of, 258-265; early 
years, 258; iirst wars, 259; "re- 
unions" and the Edict of Nantes, 
260 ; second series of wars, 261 ; 
estimate of, 264; court of, 265; 
taxes, 295. 

Louis XV, 203, 295, 300 6, 301, 305. 

Louis XVI, 301 ; character, 305 ; at- 
tempted reforms, 306-310; states 
general, 310, 313, 314 ; royal session 
of June 23, 315 ; attempts flight, 323 ; 
war, 331, 334; deposed, 335; exe- 
cuted, 338. 

Louis XVIII, 375, 378, 379, 382 ; char- 
ter of, 402, 403; moderation, 405. 

Louis Napoleon, see Napoleon III. 

Louis Philippe, 412, 413; bourgeois 
king, 414-418. 

L6-yo'la, Ig'natius, 215. 

Lu'beck, 116 b. 

Luther, p. 156 note, 173, p. 199 note 
4, 195, 205-208; and indulgences, 
205; posts theses, 206; papal bull 
burned, 207 ; at Worms, 207 ; death, 
211. 

Lutherans, in Germany, 211, 216. 

Lutzen (lobt'sen), battle of, 230. 

Lu-zern', 161, 512 note. 

Machiavelli (mak-e-a-vel'le) , 189. 
MacMahon (mak-ma-6n'), Marshal, 
439, 441, 



Mad-a-g-as'car, p. 447 note 1. 

Magdeburg (miig'de-boorG), 108, 
note 2. 

Ma-gen'ta, battle of, 429 6, 460. 

Magna Carta, 131, 132, 144, 242. 

Magyars (mod'yorz'), see Hunga- 
rians. 

Mahomet I, 169. 

Mahomet the Conqueror, 169. 

Mainz (mints), 159, 196 b. 

Majuba Hill, battle of, 563. 

Malplaquet (mal-pla-ka'), battle of, 
261. 

Malta, siege of, 224; England and, 
377 d, 557. 

Manchuria, 589, 591 . 

Mandeville, Sir John, p. 219 note 4. 

Mansfeld (miins'felt), 230. 

Manufactures, domestic system of, 
235; factory system, 528 &. . 

Marat (ma-ra'), 332, 338, 341, 346 
note 1. 

Ma-reng'o, battle of, 356. 

Margaret of Denmark, 157. 

Maria (ma-re'a), of Portugal, 502. 

Maria Theresa (te-res'aj, of Hun- 
gary, 160 note, 202, 274, 276, 
305. 

Marie Antoinette (mar-e' oh-twa- 
net'), 305, 307, 320, p. 343 note; exe- 
cuted, 344. 

Market, grant of, 110. 

Marlborough (raawl'bro) , 261. 

Marseillaise (mar-se-lyaz'), the, 334 
note. 

Marseilles (mar-sal'), 342, 4.35, 447. 

Marston Moor, battle of, 245. 

Martin V, Pope, 167. 

Marx, Karl, 485. 

Mary, Queen of England, 204 a, 
218. 

Mary of Burgundy, 162. 

Matilda of England, 125, 126. 

Maximilian I, Emperor, 160-162, 
172. 

Maximilian, " Emperor " of Mexico, 
430 &. 

May Laws (of the German Empire), 
482. 

Mazarin (maz-a-ren'), 258. 

Mazzini (mat-se'ne) , 453, 458, 459. 



652 



INDEX. 



References are to sections. 



Medici (ma'de-che), 114, 226, 227. 

Mediterranean, decay of trade on, 
197 ; ravaged by Turks, p. 232 
note 1 ; power of England in, 261, 
429a; Italy in, 488 note; Turkey 
and Russia in, 547. 

Melbourne, Lord, 541, 644. 

Met'ter-nich, Congress of Vienna, 
376 ; Rule of, 383, 385-392, 395, 396, 
399, 400, 410 note, overthrow, 
452, 453; Italy, 457; Spain, 496; 
Switzerland, 517. 

Michael Angelo (mi'ka-el an'ja-lo; 
It. pron. me-kel-an'ja-lo), 193. 

Middle Ages, characteristics, 175; 
learning, 178; literature, 187, 188; 
arts, 192. 

Mi-lan', 80, 171, 173, 261; rising of 
1848, 453. 

Military Orders, 95. 

Milton, John, 249 note 1. 

Ministerial government, in Aus- 
tria-Hungary, 492 ; in Belgium, 507 ; 
in Denmark, 522; in England, 252, 
527, 531 h, 532 h, 534, 541 ; in France, 
440, 443; in Germany, 465, 470, 
in Greece, 582; in Holland, 510; in 
Italy, 488 ; in Norway, 525 ; :a Ron- 
mania, 578; in Spain, 49P. 

Min'ne-sing-ers, 188. 

Mirabeau (me-ra-bo'), in National 
Assembly, 315, 316, 318, 321; his 
plans, 322, 332, p. 365 note 3 ; death, 
323. 

Modern history, 2, 200. 

Mohammedans, 1, 2, 11 ; civilization 
and government, 89 ; fall of em- 
pire, 91; crusades, 92, 94, 96; 
attitude toward pilgrims, 93; in 
Egypt, 99; in 1500, 170; in France, 
446. 

Moli6re (mo-lyer'), 265. 

Monarchic government, 4; growth 
of idea in France, 43 d; weakness 
in Germany, 46 ; in Germany under 
Henry I and Otto I, 48-51 ; rise of 
monarchic states, 117; period of, 
200; in France, 154; in Spain, 1.56; 
in France under Louis XVIII, 402- 
409; Orleans Monarchy, 413^H8. 
See Absolute monarchy, Despotism, 



Ministerial government, " New 
Monarchy." 

Monasteries, 3, 38, 58; reform, 59; 
growth, p. 79 note 2; characteristic 
of the Middle Ages, 175 ; and litera- 
ture in the Dark Ages, 187 ; destruc- 
tion of, in England, 218, 234; in 
Italy, 4.59 note. 

Mongol Empire, 168. 

Monroe Doctrine, 398, 430 &, 484, 
585, fiflO. 

Montcalm (mont-kam') , 277. 

Montenegro (mon-te-na'gro) , 576, 
.577, 579. 

Moors, 11, 99, 155, 214. 

Morality, of society in feudal age, 
37, 40 ; low in Germany after Thirty 
Years' War, 231 ; corruption of 
Restoration in England, 249; inter- 
national, selfish, 255 ; effect of Bis- 
marck's policy on international, 
4'^! ; of laboring class in England, 

540 

More, Rjr Thomas, p. 238 note 2, 234. 
Moreaa (mo-ro'), 355, 356. 
Morgart^n, battle of, 161. 
Moriscoes, expulsion of, 201, 224. 
Moscow mos'ko), 108; burned by 

Tartars, 168; in 1500, 170; retreat 

of Napoleon, 373. 
Mountain, the, in French Assemblies, 

330, 332, 338, 341, 342. 
Miinchengratz (miin'chen-grgts), 

Congress of, 400, 453. 
Municipal Reform in England, 539, 

542. 
Murillo (moo-re'lyo), 193. 
Mutiny Act, 251. 

Nantes (nants; Fr. pron. nont), 14; 
Edict of, 20;'., 228; revoked, 260 6, 
273 ; cruelty of Carrier, 344. 

Na'pi-er, 199. 

Naples, 171; University, 180a; ceded 
to Austria, 261 ; Ferdinand of, 280 ; 
wars of French Revolution, 335, 
340; Kingdom of Naples, 368 6; 
Revolution of 1820, 394, 396 ; Revo- 
lution of 1848, 452, 453, 458; in 
1815, 457; annexed to Sardinia, 
462. 



INDEX. 



653 



References are to seciiona. 



Napoleon I, 343, 345, 502, 513; 
puts down insurrection, 349; in 
Italy, 351, 352, 457; character and 
aims, 353; in Egypt, 354; over- 
throws Directory, 355; victories, 
356; First Consul, 357-361; Em- 
peror of the French, 362, 363 ; wars, 
364-367; reconstruction of EuroiJe, 
368-372; fall, 372-375, 565; return 
from Elba, 378; Waterloo, 379. 

Napoleon III, 424-426, Emperor, 427, 
428; war, 429-431, 469, 470; inter- 
national policy, 432; deposed, 433; 
Cavour, 460, 461; Bismarck, 466. 

Nar-bonne', 435. 

Nar'va, battle of, 269. 

Narvaez (nar-va'eth), 496. 

Nase'by, battle of, 245. 

Nationality, growth of, 385. 

National Workshops (in Paris), 
422, 423. 

Nation-States, 4 ; growth in France, 
43, 149-154; slow growth in Ger- 
many, 46 ; rise of, 117 ; beginnings 
in England, 123; rivalries, 171; 
growth of idea, 383 note. 

Navarino (na-va-re'no), 399. 

Navigation Acts, 263. 

Navy, of England, 218, 223, 545; of 
Germany, 484, 487 ; of Netherlands, 
225 ; of Norway, 526 ; of Spain, 220, 
223; of Sweden, 526. 

Neck'er, 308, 310, 314 note, 316, 322, 
p. 336 note 2. 

Nelson, at battle of the Nile, 354; at 
Trafalgar, 366. 

Netherlands, 162 ; under Charles V, 
172; revolt, 201, 219; separation 
into United Provinces and Spanish 
Netherlands, 221-223 ; Austria gains 
Spanisli Netherlands, 261 ; Union of 
1815,505-506. See Belgium, Holland. 

New Model Army, 245, 246, 248. 

" New Monarchy," 105, 117 ; in Eng- 
land, 147. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 198. 

Nibelungen Lied (ne-be-lung'-en 
let), 188. 

Nice (nes), 337, 350; after Congress 
of Vienna, 377 6; Napoleon III, 
429 &, 460. 



Nicholas I, of Russia, 392, 568, 573, 
577. 

Nicholas II, 573. 

Nicholas V, Pope, 195. 

Nihihsts, 573. 

Nile, battle of, 354. 

Nobility, French, 288, 293, 294, 304; 
in States General, 313, 314, 315. 
See French Revolution. 

Nobility, abolished in Norway, 525. 

Norman Conquest, 16, 44, 118; ef- 
fects, 123. 

Normandy, 15, 125, 127, 131, 151. 

Normans, 15; in England, 16; in 
Apulia, 67; in Sicily, 67. 

Norsemen, raids, 13, 14; in Nor- 
mandy, 15; in Neustria, 41; mer- 
cenaries of Byzantine Empire, 90; 
in Western Europe, 157. 

North German Confederation, 
468 b. 

Norway, 18, 157; after Congress of 
Vienna, 377 c, 523; and Sweden in 
19th century, 523-526; independ- 
ence, 525. 

Notables, Assembly of, 309, 310. 

Notre Dame (no'tr diim), 180 c, 346 
note 2. 

N6-va'ra, battle of, 453, 456, 459. 

Nov'gS-rod, 108, 116 b. 

Oath of Strasburg, 8 note. 

"Old Catholics," 482. 

Olmiitz, 455, 456, 464. 

Orange, House of, 204 c, 377 b ; Wil- 
liam of, 222. 

Ordeal, trial by, 130. 

Oriental Civilization, 1, 3; influ- 
ence on Mohammedans, 89; Eu- 
rope, 102 : in Russia, 268. 

Orleans Monarchy, 413-418, 419. 

Oscar II, of Sweden, 525. 

Otto I, Emperor (the Great) , 49-54 ; 
and reform of Papacy, 60. 

Otto II, 62, 63. 

Otto III, 62, 63. 

Otto I of Greece, 582. 

Ottoman Turks, 169. See Turks. 

Ou-den-ar'de, battle of, 261. 

Oxford, University of, p. 197 note 2| 
Colet at, 195. 



654 



INDEX. 



References are to sections. 



Padua, University of, p. 197 nots 2. 

Padua Letter, tlie, 331. 

Palatinate, 159, 261. 

Pa-na-ma', scandal of 1893, 444 ex- 
ercise. 

Papacy, organizing force in Christen- 
dom, 1, 3, 4 a ; beginning of Holy 
Roman Empire, 52, 53, 55 a ; power 
in Middle Ages, 57 ; decline of, 58 
reform, 59, 61, 63, 65 c; Empire 
and, 66-88; Gregory VII, 68, 72 
revenue, 71 ; investitures, 73-76 
conflict over Italy, 78, 80; at its 
height, 82-84 ; and Frederick II, 86 
results to, of strife, 87 ; Crusades 
93; and rise of New Monarchies 
117; and England, p. 137 note 1 
163-165, 218 ; in 14th and 15th cen- 
turies, 163-167; and France, 163- 
166, 328, 360 a, 443 ; Babylonian 
captivity, 165; Great Schism, 166; 
unity restored, 167; position in 
1500, 170; indulgences, 205, 206; 
and Reformation, 206, 207; Inqui- 
sition, 214; Counter-reformation, 
215; Turkish pirates, 224; Direc- 
tory, 355 ; Napoleon's Europe, 368 h ; 
Napoleon III, 430 a ; in 1848, 453, 458 ; 
and Kingdom of Italy, 463, 490. 

Papal States, 86; anarchy and revo- 
lution, 165; in 1500, 171 ; Inquisition, 
381; in 1848, 453; 1815, 457; 1830, 
458 ; Kingdom of Italy , 462, 463, 490. 

Paris, 14, 41 ; secured by Henry of 
Navarre, 228; famine, 314; saves 
the Assembly, 316, 317; Assembly 
at, 320-323 ; Convention at, 333-347 ; 
Reign of Terror, 344; improve- 
ments, 359, 428 ; Napoleon, 362 ; en- 
tered by Allies, 374; Revolution 
of 1830, 411, 412, 458; socialism, 
418 ; February Days, 419, 452 ; June 
Days, 423 ; siege of, 433, 434 ; Com- 
mune of 1871, 435-436; to-day, 447. 

Paris, Congress of, 429 a, 459, 578. 

Parish (English), local government 
in, 538 a, 540. 

Parlement of Paris, 310. 

Parliament, English, ' ''• growth, 
134-136; Model F =)nt, 135; 

Lords and Commgn. deposi- 



tion of kings, 137, 138, 143 ; elects 
Henry IV, 138, 143; land-laws, 140; 
Peasant rising and, 142; growth, 
143; Good Parliament, 143; Liber- 
ties of Englishmen, 144; decline, 
147; struggle with Stuarts, 200, 
237-244; " No Parliament" period, 
243; Long Parliament, 244-246; 
Pride's Purge, 246; Cavalier Par- 
liament, 249; after the Revolution 
of 1688, 250, 251; annual meetings, 
251 ; ministerial government, 252 ; 
organ of oligarchy, 527 ; inclosures, 
528; First Reform Bill, 529, 531, 
533; Second Reform Bill, 534; 
Third Reform Bill, 535; reappor- 
tionment of 1885, 536 ; relation of 
Houses, 532 a ; the ministi-y, 532 h ; 
minor reforms, 537; social reform 
by, 542-545 ; and Ireland, 551, 552. 

Paschal II, Pope, 73 note 4. 

Pataria, 67 «. 

Pauperism in England, 234, 528. 

Pavia (jja-ve'a), battle of, p. 232 note 1. 

Pays d'Btat (pa-e' da-tii'), 300 a. 

Peace Conference of Hague, 594. 

Peace Convention at Venice, 80. 

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 274. 

Peace of Amiens, 356. 

Peace of Augsburg, 211, 219, 232. 

Peace of Campo Formio, 351, 356, 
370. 

Peace of Constance, 80. 

Peace of Prague, 468. 

Peace of San Stefano, 577. 

Peace of Tilsit, 365-366. 

Peace of Utrecht, 261, 265. 

Peace of Westphalia, 4, 232, 255. 
273, 512. 

Peace of 1814, 375. 

Peace of the Land, 65 h. 

Peasant Revolt of 1381, 138, 142. 

Peasantry, 105 note ; of Bulgaria, 
581; of Egypt, 560; of England, 
124, 140-142, 528, 554; in France, 
288, 290, 292-297, 328, 342, 359, 450 ; 
in Germany, 208, 231, 279, 371; of 
Ireland, 281 h, 544, 550, 552; of 
Roumania, 578 ; of Russia, 569, 570 ; 
of Servia, 580; of Spain, 500, 501. 

Peasant War in Germany, 208. 



INDEX. 



655 



Ueferenees are to sections. 



Pedro I, of Brazil, 496, 502. 

Pedro II, 502. 

Peel, Sir Robert, p. 544 note 1, 541, 
544. 

Peninsular War, 367. 

Perier (pa-re-a'), Casimir, 442 note. 

Persecutions, religious, of Inquisi- 
tion, 214; in Geneva, 217; in Eng- 
land, 218, 236, 249; in France, 227, 
260 h ; in Germany, 232 note, 243. 

Persia, civilization of, among the 
Moliammedans, 89; invaded by 
Tartars, 168 ; Europe in, 585, 588. 

Perugino (pa-roo-je'no), 193. 

Peter the Great of Russia, 200,256, 
266 ; character and aims, 267, 269, 
565, 567 6. 

Peter the Hermit, 94. 

Peter Karageorgevitch, 580. 

Peter's Pence, 71. 

Petition of Right, 242, 243. 

Petrarch, 189, 195 note. 

Philip I, Emperor, 162, 172. 

Philip I of France, 43. 

Philip II of France (Augustus), 82, 
97, 148, 149, 151, 153. 

Philip IV of France (the Fair), 148 
note, 149, 153, 154, 164, 165. 

Phihp VI of France (of Valois), 148 
note. 

Philip II of Spain, 162, 201, 212, 218; 
power, 220; Netherlands, 221-223. 

Phihp III of Spain, 201, 224. 

Philip IV of Spain, 201, 259. 

PhiUp V of Spain, 201, 261. 

Philippines, 590. 

Piedmont (ped'mont), 394, 396, 457, 
458. 

Pn'nitz, Declaration of, 331. 

Pirates, French, 139; Turkish, 209 
note, 224. 

Pisa (pe'za), Council of, 167. 

Pitt, William, 277, 527, 529. 

Pitt, William, the younger, 529. 

Pius IX, Pope, 453, 458, 490. 

Pius X, 490. 

Placemen, 416, 417. 

Plan-ta'g-e-nets, 126-143 ; French 
domains of, lost to France, 151. 

Plassey, battle of, 277. 

Pocket Boroughs, 627, 529. 



Poitiers (pwa-ti-a'), battle of, 139, 
234. 

Poitou (pwa-too'), 41, 127, 139, 151. 

Poland, 50, 55, 64 c, 272 note ; rav- 
aged by Tartars, 168, 170 ; decline, 
200, 257 ; partition of, 269, 278, 565, 
667 &; Duchy of Warsaw, 370, 373, 
377; Revolution of 1830, 391, 392; 
Russianized, 574. 

Polo, Marco, 197. 

P6m-e-ra'ni-a, 232 h, 273; after Con- 
gress of Vienna, 377 c. 

Poor-la-w in England, 542. 

Pope, Alexander, 265 note. 

Portugal, 82, 155; discoveries, 197; 
Inquisition in, 214 ; seized by Spain, 
220; wars of French Revolution, 
340; war with Napoleon, 366, 367, 
372 ; Revolution of 1820, 394 ; in the 
19th century, 502-504. 

Poussin (poo-saii'), 193. 

Praemunire, Statute of, 165. 

Pragmatic Sanction, 274. 

Prague (prag), 166; Peace of, 468. 

Presbyterians, in France, 211; in 
Geneva, 217; in England, 236; in 
Long Parliament, 244, 246. 

Pride's Purge, 246. 

Prim, 496. 

Printing, 196 h ; in Holland, 225. 

Protectorate in England, 204 h, 248. 

Protestantism, rise, 205-218; in 
Germany, 209-212, 219, 230-232; 
origin of name, 210; in South of 
Europe, 213; sects, 216-218; in 
Netherlauds, 221; in France, 226- 
229, 446. See Calvinism, Hugue- 
nots, Lutherans, Puritans, Presby- 
terians, Reformation. 

Provence (pro-vons'), 152 6. 

Provisors, Statute of, 165. 

Prussia, beginning, 50 note 1, 99, 200, 
257 ; rise of, 261 note, 270-274, 276, 
278-280 ; and wars of French Revo- 
lution, 335, 337, 350; and Napoleon, 
364, 365, 370, 372, 374, 375, 379 ; part of 
Holy Roman Empire, 369 ; reforms 
of Stein, 371; Congress of Vienna, 
376, 377 -"'^ 380; reaction in, 382; 
and Me' ~h, 387-392; Congress 

of Troppiaa^ 395; Holy Alliance, 



656 



INDEX. 



References are to sections. 



395-400; Franco-Prussian War, 
430 c, 432-434, 469, 470; risings in 
1848, 452, 454-456, 464; William -I, 
464, 465; Sclileswig-Hol stein, 466; 
Six Weeks' War, 467 ; North Ger- 
man Confederation, 468; place of, 
in German Empire, 473-475, 478. 

Ptolemy (tol'e-my), geographer, 198. 

Pultava (piil-tii'va), battle of, 269. 

Puritans, 218, 236, 240; in Ireland, 
244; in Civil War in England, 245. 

Pym, 244, 246 note 2. 

Quad-riv'i-um, 178. 
Queen Anne's War, 261. 

Racine (ra-sen') , 265. 

Raleigh (ra'li), 233. 

Ramillies (ra-me-ye'), 261. 

Raphael (raf'a-el), 193. 

" Reds," the, 420, 423-425, 435, 436. 

Referendum, the, 519. 

Reformation, the Protestant, 4, 173, 
176, 200, 201, 285; Age of, 205-232; 
in Germany, 205-212, 216, 217; in 
England, 218, 233; Wars of, 208, 
211, 219, 220-232. See Protestant- 
ism. 

Reform Bill, of 1832, 531, 533, p. 535 
note 1 ; of 1867, 534; of 1884, 535. 

Reichstag (richs'tao) of German 
Empire, 475, 482 ; socialists in, 485 ; 
parties in, 487. 

Reign of Terror, 333, 344-346. 

Religious Wars, in Germany, 211 ; 
a century of, 219-232; Spain and 
the Netherlands, 220-225; French 
Huguenots, 226-229 ; Thirty Years' 
War, 230-2.32. 

Rem'tarandt, 193. 

Renaissance, 4, 102, 114, 174-199, 
p. 231 note 1, 285 ; in England, 199, 
233. 

Representation in England, 527, 
529, 531 a, 533-536; local, 539, .540. 

Representative Assemblies of 
Freemen, 3. 

Representative government, be- 
ginnings of, in Austria, 491 ; Bulga- 
ria, 581; Denmark, 521; England, 
136 ; France, 154, 313, 404-409 ; Ger- 



many, 159 note ; Greece, 582; Italy, 
488 ; Netherlands, 162, 222 note 1 ; 
Roumania, 578; Russia, 572, 675; 
Servia, 580 ; Spain, 156, 393 ; Swit- 
zerland, 161. See Constituent As- 
sembly, Cortes, Diet, Duma, Es- 
tates General, Federal Assembly, 
Landtag, Parlement, Parliament, 
Reichstag, Rigsdag, Sobranje, Stor- 
thing, Zemstvo. 

Republic, French, First, 338-362; 
Second, 421-426; Third, 43.3-451: 
Spanish, of 1873-1874, 497. 

Restoration of the Stuarts, 249. 

" Reunions," under Louis XIV, 260a. 

Revolution, French, of 1789, 285-376. 

Revolutions, in England, 204 &, 285; 
in America, 284, 285 ; of Brumaire, 
355, 357 ; of 1820, 385, 393, 394, 458 ; 
of 1830, 382, 385, 391, 400, 410-412, 
458 ; of 1848, 385, 417, 419-423, 452- 
456; in Spain, 495, 496, 498; in Por- 
tugal, 502; in Balkan States, 576- 
582. See French Revolution. 

Richard I of England, the Lion- 
Hearted, 97, 131. 

Richard II of England, 138, 143, 151, 
166. 

Richard III of England, 146. 

Richelieu (resh-le-uh') , 203, 229, 230. 

Ridley, execution of, 218. 

Rienzi (re-en'ze), 165 note. 

Rigsdag, 522. 

Robber Knights, p. 123 note, 158. 

Robert Guiscard (ges-kar'), 67 6, 
180 ff. 

Robert the Strong, 41. 

Robespierre (ro-bes-pyer'), 317 
note, 321, 322, 338, 342, 346. 

Rolf the Dane, 15. 

Rollin (rol'in; Fr. pron. ro-laiV), Le- 
dru, 425. 

Romance, language, 9 note 2 ; lands 
remain Catholic, 218. 

Roman civilization, 1, 3; influence 
on feudalism, 24; influence of 
Roman idea of government in 
France, 43 c ; on the Saxons, 45; 
on Towns, 119 ; on gilds, 112 ; law, 
180 o, b. 

Romanesque Architecture, 192. 



INDEX. 



65T 



References are to sections. 



Rome, Rienzi, 163 note ; Great 
Schism, 166; sacked by Charles V, 
p. 232 note 1 ; Pope driven from, 
355; rising- of 18i8, 452, 453 ; Italy, 
462, 463, 4il0. 

Romilly (rom'il-i), p. 544 note 1, 542. 

Root and Branch, the (party in Long 
Parliament), 244. 

Ross'bach, battle of, 276. 

Rotten Boroughs, 527, 529, 531a, 
534. 

Rotterdam, 162 note. 

Rouen (roo-oi'i), 14. 

Roumania, 576, 577, 578. 

Round Heads, 245 note 3, 

Rousseau (roo-so') , 302, 303, 321, 332. 

Rubens, 193. 

Rubruquis (rii-brii-ke), 197. 

Rudolph of Hapsburg (booro) , 88 ; 
Emperor, 158-161. 

Rump Parliament, 246-248. 

Russell, Lord John, p. 535 note 3,531, 
531 h, p. 550 note 1, 539, 541, 545. 

Russia, growth of towns, 108; Tartar 
province, 168; in 1500, 170; rise, 
200, 257, 262, 266-269 ; Seven Years' 
War, 276 ; partition of Poland, 269, 
278; wars of French Revolution, 
335, 355, 356; war with Napoleon, 
364-366, 372-375, 380; Congress of 
Vienna, 376, 377; Reaction, 382, 
385 ; Congress of Troppau, 395 ; and 
Greece, 399 h ; Crimean War, 429 a, 
459 a ; in 1848, 453, 455 ; in China, 
484; and Sweden and Norway, 
525; and Turkey, 547, 577; in the 
19th century, 565-575; revolution, 
575 ; and Balkan Peninsula, 577- 
578; alliances, 583, 584; in Asia, 
588, 589-591. 

Russian Japanese War, 567, 574, 591. 

Sado^wa (sa'do-va), battle of, 467, 

469, 491. 
Sa-gas'ta, 500, 501. 
St. Benedict, see Benedictine rule. 
St. Bernard, see Bernard of Clair- 

vaux. 
St. Dominic, 84. 
St. Helena, 379, 557. 
St. Just (san-ghiist) , 342, 346 note 3. 



St. Louis, see Louis IX of France. 

Sal'a-din, 97. 

Sa-ler'no, 180. 

Salisbury (sawlz'bu-ri), Lord, 540, 541. 

San Steph'a-n5, Peace of, 577. 

Saracens, in Italy, 53. See Moham- 
medans. 

Sardinia, 261, 335, 350, 351, 372 ; after 
Congress of Vienna, 377 h, .380, 381, 
394 ;"war of Napoleon III for, 429 h ; 
risings of 1848, 452, 453, 456, 459; 
grows into Kingdom of Italy, 460- 
463. 

Sa-vo-na-ro'la, p. 183 note 3, 457. 

Savoy, 261, 337, 350; after Congress 
of Vienna, 377 b, 457 ; Napoleon III, 
429 &, 460. 

Saxons, 16; local institutions, 118; 
feudalism, 122. 

Saxony, 65, 271; electorate, 159: 
kingdom, 370; after Congress of 
Vienna, 377. 

Scandinavia, Knut's empire, 13, 16, 
55, 157 ; early literature, 188 ; Luth- 
eranism in, 211; kingdoms in 19th 
century, 521-528. See Denmark, 
Norway, Sweden. 

Schlesvj-ig (vio) - Holstein Ques- 
tion, 466, 521. See Danish War. 

Scholasticism, 182-186; in Univer- 
. sities, 182-186. 

Schools, in Dark Ages, 178; rise of 
Universities, 179-181. See Educa- 
tion, Scholasticism, Universities, 
Kulturkampf. 

Schwarzenberg (shwart'sen-bero) , 
453, 455, 491. 

Schwyz (shwlts), 161. 

Scotland, 127, 139; Presbyterians, 
236; Laud, 243: Charles II, King 
of the Scots, 247; joined to Eng- 
land, 281a; in Parliament, 527. 

Scrooby, 236. 

Scutage, origin, 128 note 2; in Magna 
Carta, p. 148 note 3. 

Sebastopol, 459 6. 

Sedan (se-doii'), 432, 433, 470. 

Sel'juk Turks, see Turks. 

Sem'pach, battle of, 161. 

Sen-e-g-al', -151. 

Senlac, battle of, 16 d. 



658 INDEX. 

References are to sections. 



Separatists, 236. 

Sepoy Mutiny, 559. 

September Massacres (Paris), 336; 

Serfs, 3 ; origin, 21 ; land tenure, 26, 
34 ; better side of serfdom, 35 ; re- 
lation to feudalism, 39; abolition 
in England, 140; in Poland, 278; 
benevolent despots and, 280; in 
France, 292; abolished in Confed- 
eration of the Rhine, 371 ; in Prus- 
sia, 371 ; restored in Sardinia, 381 ; 
emancipation in Russia, 569, 573; 
in Roumania, 578. 

Ser-ra'no, 496. 

Ser-ve'tus, p. 223 note 2, 217. 

Servia, 169, 576, 577, 580. 

Seven Years' War, 276. 

Shakspere, p. 110 note 1, 199, 233. 

Sheriffs, 119, 124. 

Ship-money, 243, 244. 

Shire, the, in Saxon England, 118, 119. 

Siam, p. 447 note 2, 588. 

Siberia, 266, 567 a. 

Sicily, 67, 372; union with Empire, 
82; Charles of Anjou in, 86; to 
1500, 171; ceded to Austria, 261; 
Revolution of 1820, 394 ; annexed to 
Italy, 462. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 223 note. 

Siey6s (se-yas') , 304, 314, 321, 355, 357. 

Si-le'si-a, 274. 

Simon of Montfort, 133 ; and Parlia- 
ment, 134. 

Simony, 58; reform, 59, 65 &; connec- 
tion with investitures, 73, 74. 

Six Weeks' War, 465, 467. 

Slavery, abolished in Spanish col- 
onies, 600 ; in English colonies, 542. 

Slavs, in Europe, 1, 2, 11 ; forced back 
by Germans, 50, 54, 64 c; and luno- 
cent III, 82 ; in Greek Empire, 169, 
170; in Holy Roman Empire, 369, 
p. 394 note 2; in Balkan Peninsula, 
385, 576 ; in Bohemia and Hungary, 
453, 493 : in Russia, 566, 570, 571,574. 

Smaikald (smal'kalt). League of, 
210, 211, 219. 

So-bi-es'ki. See John Sobieski. 

Sobranje, 581. 

Social classes, feudal, 26, 34 ; results 
of crusades on, 105 ; changes owing 



to rise of towns, 105, 107, 108; 
affected by rise of new monarchies, 
117 ; in France, 286-291 ; privileged 
classes in France, 295 ; distinctions 
abolished, by Assembly, 318; caste 
broken down in Prussia, 371; in 
England, 528; in Russia, 571. 

Socialism, in France, 418-424, 435, 
436, 445; in Germany, 481 note 2, 
482, 485, 486; iu Italy, 488; in 
Spain, 499, 501; in Belgium, 508; 
in Sweden, 524; in Norway, 526; 
in England, 555; in Russia, 573. 

Solferino (sol-fe-re'no), battle of, 
429 h, 460. 

Solyman the Magnificent, p. 189 
note 2 ; alliance with France, p. 232 
note 1 ; attacks Germany, 210. 

Sonderbund (zon'der-boont), the, 
516, 517, 520. 

Sou-dan', 587. 

South Africa, 547, 557, 558, 563. 

Spain, 55, 99 ; growth of towns, 108, 
209 ; to 1492, 155 ; growth of mon- 
archy, 156; in 1500, 170, 171; and 
Netherlands, 162, 220-223; early 
literature, 188; art of, 193; dis- 
coveries, 197 ; table of Kings, 201 ; 
Inquisition in, 214, 381 ; decay, 224; 
war with England, 239; in Grand 
Alliance, 259; War of the Spanish 
Succession, 261; war in America, 
275, 277, 380 note, 393 note, ,398; 
War of Austrian Succession, 274; 
wars of French Revolution, 335, 
340, 350; war with Napoleon, 364, 
367, 372, 380; Revolution of 1820, 
393, 397, 495; Revolution of 1848, 
452 ; in 19th century, 495-501. 

Spanish-American War, 501, 589, 
590. 

Spanish March, 150. 

Spanish Succession, War of, 261. 

Speier (spir). Diet of, 210. 

Stadtholder (stat'hol-der), 222 note. 

States General, of France, 307, 310, 
313. See Estates General. 

States General, of Holland, 222 note, 
510. 

Steelyard, 116, note. 

Stein (stin), 369, 371, 387. 



INDEX. 



659 



References are to sections. 



Stem Duchies, 45 ; and Henry 1, 48; 
and Otto I. 49. 

Stephen of England., 125. 

Storthing (stor'tiug), 523, 525. 

Stral'sund, Peace of, 116 b. 

Suez Canal, 560. 

Suffrage, Manhood, see Franchise. 

Sully, Duke of, 228. 

Supremacy, Act of, 218. 

Suzerains (suz'er-ans), origin, 19 ; 
privileges, 21, 22; classes, 26; con- 
tract, 27; aids, 28-30; obligations, 
31 ; in the Church, 32 ; relations to 
serfs and villeins, 34; life in the 
castle, 37 ; duties, 40 ; in France, 
42, 292-294. 

Sweden, 13, 18; independent, 157; 
in 1500, 170; decline, 200, 257; and 
Protestant cause in Germany, 230 ; 
results to, of Treaty of Westphalia, 
232 6; war with Louis XIV, 259; 
and Russia, 269, 365, 565, 567 6; 
Seven Years' War, 276; reform by 
benevolent ministers in, 280; wars 
of French Revolution, 335; of Na- 
poleon, 372; after Congress of 
Vienna, 377 c, 523; Revolution of 
1848, 452 ; and Denmark, 521 ; and 
Norway in 19th century, 523-526. 

Swegn (swan), 16. 

Switzerland, growth, 161 ; in 1500, 
170; independence recognized, 232 
b ; Helvetic Republic, 355, 372, 513; 
after Congress of Vienna, 377 6, 
514 ; civil war, p. 404 note ; from 
1789-1848, 512-517; to-day, 518-520. 

Tables of Rulers, in Empire and 
Austria, 62, 202; in England, 125, 
138, 146, 204, 541 ; in France, p. 52 
note 1, 148, 203, 442 note ; in Ger- 
manv, P- 56 note, 62; in Spain, 201. 

Taille (tal), 296 a. 

Talleyrand, 376, p. 384 note 3. 

Tam-er-lane', 168 note 3, 169. 

Tartars, 91; invasions of the 13th 
century, 168 ; effect on discoveries, 
197 ; in Russia, 566, 567. See Turks. 

Taxes, in feudal France, 42 b ; effect 
of introduction of money, 105; in 
England, 134, 143, 144, 163, 164, 239, 



241-243, 249-251 , 529, 545 ; in France, 
153, 163, 164. 264, 288, 289, 295-297, 
298, 307-310, 324, 327, 328, 403, 447 ; 
in Germany, 464, 465, 475 ; in Italy, 
488 ; in Russia, 570 ; in Spain, 496, 
497, 500. 

Telescope, invention of, 196 c- 

Tell, William, 161 note 3. 

Templars, 95. 

Tennis Court Oath, 315. 

Teutonic Order, 95, 99, 170, 269, 272 
note. 

Teutons, 1, 2; influence on feudal- 
ism, 24; on Saxons, 45; on customs 
in Switzerland, 161. 

Thiers (te-er') , 409, 415 note, 4.34, 438. 

Thirty-nine Articles, the, 218. 

Thirty Years' War, the, 219, 224, 
230-232, 239, p. 272 note 2, 255, 

Thomas of A-qui'no, 185. 

Tilsit, Peace of, 365, 366. 

TIn-to-ret'to, 193. 

Titian (tish'an) , 193. 

Tocqueville (tok'vil), 358, 415 note. 

Tories, the (Party in England), 252, 
382, 529, 530, 533. See Conserva- 
tive Party. 

Toulon (too-lon'), 342, 343, 353. 

Toulouse^ (too-looz'), 41, 83, 152,435. 

Tours (toor), battle of, 14. 

Towns, 3, 84; origin of, 105; rise of, 
106-116; in England, 108, 113, 121, 
145, 147, 233, 235, 528 b, 539; in 
France, 108, 115, 228, 229; in Ger- 
many, 74, 76, 108, 116, 369, 371 ; in 
Italy, 76, 80, 82, 87, 108, 114; in 
Netherlands, 162; in Russia, 108; 
in Spain, 108, 156, 209. 

Townships, in Saxon England, 121. 

Traf-al-gar', battle of, 366. 

Transvaal, 547, 563. 

Trent, Council of, p. 229 note 1, 215. 

Trentino (tren-te'no), 489. 

Triennial Bill, 251. 

Trier (trer), 159. 

Trivium, 178. 

Troppau (trop'pow), Congress of, 
395, 407 note. 

Troubadours (troo'ba-doors), 188. 

Trouveurs (troo-vers), 188. 

Truce of God, 33, 656. 



660 INDEX. 

References are to sections. 



Tudors, 146, 147, 204 a; survey of 
period, 233-235; and Parliament, 
237, 240. 

Tuileries (twe'le-rez), 334, 335, 419. 

Tunis, 451, 489, 583. 

Turgot (tiir-go'), 307, 308. 

Turkey, Kussia and, 365, 373, 545, 
565, 567 h, 577 ; unprogressive, 385 ; 
rebellion in Greece, 399, 577; Cri- 
mean War, 429 a ; and Germany in 
Asia Minor, 484; and subject races 
in Balkan Peninsula, 576, 577 ; and 
Roumania, 577, 578, 585. 

Turks, appearance, 91 ; Crusades-, 
92; capture Jerusalem, 93; in 
Syria, 99; Venice, 114; invasion of 
Ottoman Turks, 169 ; effect on dis- 
coveries, 197; wars of Charles V, 
209; Lepanto, 224; driven back 
from Vienna, 237; Austria and, 
262; Russia and, 263, 267, 269; 
massacre in Greece, 399. 

Tuscany, 280; risings of 1848, 452, 
453 ; in 1815, 457 ; annexed to Sar- 
dinia, 461. 

Ulm (oolm), 107; battle of, 365. 

Urtra-mon'ta-nism, 443. See Kul- 
turkampf. 

United. Provinces, see Nether- 
lands. 

United States of America, 284, 
398; Civil War, 430 6, 5.34, 545: 
Spanish-American War, 501; ref- 
erendum in, 519; franchise in 
states, p. 553 note 1; civil service 
in, 537 & ; world power, 589-591. 

Universities, 178-181, 389, 390. 

Unterwalden (oon-ter-val'den), 161. 

Urban, Pope, 93. 

Urban II, 74. 

Uri (oo'ri), 161. _ 

Utrecht (u'trekt, D. pron. oo'trScht), 
Peace of, 261, 265. 

Val'la, Laurentius, 195. 
Valmy (val-me'), battle of, 337. 
Valois (val-wa'). House of, 148 note. 
Van Dyck (van dot') , 193. 
Vane, Sir Harry, 244, 246 note 2. 
Van Eyck (van ik'), 193. 



Vas'co da Ga'naa, 197. 

Vassals, 21, 26; relations with Tords 
27; services, 28-30; not serfs, 39; 
in France, 42; towns held as vas- 
sals, p. 126 note 2. 

Velasquez (va-las'kgth), 193. 

Vendee (voii-da'), 342. 

Vendome (voh-dom') Column, p. 366 
note 3. 

Venice, 80, 98, 103, 114, 171, 179, 193, 
224, 351, 352, 377, 453. 

Verdun (ver-duh'). Treaty of, 8, 9, 
41, 152 h ; surrender of, 336. 

Vergil, 189. 

Verona (va-ro'na). Congress of, 397, 
407 note. 

Versailles (ver-salz'; Fr. pron. 
ver-sjiy'), 314, 435, 436; Assembly 
at, 314-319, 320. 

Victor Emmanuel II, 456, 459, 460, 
462. 

Victoria of England, 204 e, 547. 

Vienna, saved from Turks, 257, 262; 
conquered by Napoleon, 365 ; Con- 
gress of, 376-380, 381; rising of 
1848, 453, 454. 

Vikings, see Norsemen. 

Villages, feudal, 36; Saxon, 121; in 
France, 296. See Towns. 

Villeinage, 21; land tenure, 26, 34; 
relation to feudal system, 39; in 
England, 124; disappearance, 142, 
2.34. 

Vlad'i-mir, 108. 

Voltaire (vol-ter'), 302. 

Wagram (va'gram), 367, 370. 
Waiblingen (vib'ling-en), 77. 
Wal'de-mar of Denmark, 116 6. 
Wales, 127, 553. 
Wallenstein (vol'en-stin), 230. 
Walpole, Robert, 252. 
Walter the Penniless, 94. 
Warsaw, Duchy of, 370, 373, 377. 
Wars of the Roses, 138, 145, 147, 

2.33, 241. 
Wartburg (vart'boora), Luther at, 

207 ; celebration at, 389, 395. 
Waterloo, battle of, 379, 384, 395, 

404. 
Watling Street, 16. 



INDEX. 



661 



References are to sections. 



Wat the Tyler, 142. 

Wedniore, Treaty of, 16 rt. 

Weimar (vi'mar), 388, 389. 

Welfs, 77, 204 e. 

Welling-ton, Duke of, 367, 379, 531. 

Wentworth, Thomas, 243, 244, 549. 

Wessex, Ki, 119. 

West Indies, 542, 557. 

Westphalia, Brandenburg in, 273; 
Kingdom of, 370; Switzerland in, 
512. 

Westphalia, Peace of, 4 &, 232; 
effect on France and Spain, 255. 

Whig-s (Englisli), the, 252, 531, 533, 
See Liberal Party. 

White Terror, the, 347. 

Wilhelmina (vll-hel-men'a), of Hol- 
land, 510. 

William I of England (the Con, 
queror) , 16 (/ ; and Church, 123 ; and 
feudalism, 124; reign, 125, 151. 

William II of England (Rufus), 
125, 183. 

William III of England (of Orange), 
204 c, 249-251; and parties, 252; 
wars with Louis XIV, 259, 261 

William IV of England, 204 e, 531. 

William the Silent (of Orange), 
222. 

William I of Prussia, 464, 467 ; Ger- 
man Emperor, 470, 480. 



William II of Prussia, 480, 485, 486. 

Winkelried (wink'el-red), Arnold, 
p. 174 note 3. 

Winthrop, John, p. 257 note 3. 

WIt'an, 119, 122, 134, 137 note 2. 

Wittenberg (vit'ten-bero). Univer- 
sity of, 205. 

Wolfe, 277. 

Women, effect of Chivalry on posi- 
tion of, 37; voting of, in English 
rural units, 540; woman suffrage 
in platform of German socialists, 
485. 

Worcester (woos'ter) , 247. 

Worms (vorms), Concordat of, 75 
Diet at, 207, 209. 

Wiirtemberg (viirt'tem-bera), 369 
after Thirty Years' War, 231 ; made 
a kingdom, 370; constitution, 3 
Peace of Prague, 468 b. 

Wyc'lif, 141, 166, p. 199 note 4, 188. 

Yorkists, 138, 145-147; review of 

period, 233-235. 
Young Italy, 458. 
Ypres (e'pr), 162. 

Zadruga (za-druo'ga), 580, 581. 
Zemstvo (zemst'vo), 572, 573. 
Zola (zo-lii'), 444 exercise. 
Zurich (tsii'rich), 161. 



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